


Christmas Present

by cruisedirector, Dementordelta



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Blow Jobs, Community: 3fan_holidays, First Kiss, First Time, HP: EWE, Holidays, Humor, Library Sex, M/M, Porn, Sex Lessons, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-02
Updated: 2013-03-13
Packaged: 2017-11-23 09:27:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/620613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cruisedirector/pseuds/cruisedirector, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dementordelta/pseuds/Dementordelta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snape had hoped to be alone at Hogwarts for Christmas, but Potter had other ideas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Christmas Eve

**Author's Note:**

  * For [torino10154](https://archiveofourown.org/users/torino10154/gifts).



> Started for the 2012 3fan_holidays exchange, then it just kept going. Many thanks to Emynn for beta.

"I might have known I'd find you here."

Snape was unable to keep the gloating tone from his voice as he approached Potter in the Restricted Section of the library at Hogwarts. He had hoped to have an entirely private Christmas Eve, since the rest of the school was deserted, but as the Headmistress had departed for Sinistra's family party, she had warned Snape that Potter would be staying at Hogwarts as well.

Like everyone at the Ministry of Magic, McGonagall had been persuaded in the aftermath of Voldemort's fall that Potter could do no wrong. The fact that Potter had elected to return to Hogwarts to finish his training didn't seem suspicious to anyone but Snape, and perhaps Filch, but even the caretaker had gone to visit some relative not clever enough to have disowned him. Which meant that, instead of spending a quiet evening refining anti-venins in the dungeons, Snape had found himself prowling the corridors to discover what delinquency Potter was up to this time.

Indeed, Potter nearly jumped out of his chair at the sound of Snape's voice. Glancing at the cover of his reading material, it wasn't difficult to guess why. "Don't tell me that's for a research project," Snape continued, smirking. "Honestly, Potter, is ancient pornography the best you could do? Do they no longer sell _Wicked Witches Weekly_ in Hogsmeade?"

"I'm sure they do, but wicked witches aren't really my thing," Potter said, his expression nonchalant as he held up the book for Snape to get a better look. Indeed, though the moving images on the cover were naked and engaged in a great deal of wickedness, there was not a witch to be seen. "Anyway, I was just wasting time with this until you came looking for me."

With a wave of his hand, Snape made the book fly back to the familiar spot on the shelf where it belonged. "So certain that I would suspect your motives for staying at Hogwarts when we both know you were invited by the Weasleys to spend your holidays with them?"

Potter flushed a bit. "I didn't think it was a good idea to stay in close quarters with Ginny a month after breaking up with her. Ron's still angry, too. And if I went to the Grangers, Hermione would ask a lot of nosy questions."

Snape had no doubt that that was true. Nor did he need to wonder why Potter had not considered a visit to the Dursleys; he had enough unpleasant memories of Christmases with his own parents, his father drunk and belligerent, his mother complaining about all the things they could not afford. "Still, you might have found something more productive to do than reading licentious material," he told Potter.

The book gone, Potter rose from his seat. Snape could not resist sneaking a glance to see whether the dirty pictures had given him an erection, but it was too dark to be certain. "I told you, I was waiting for you," Potter said. "Since you won't let me take your class..."

"Surely the highly-touted slayer of the Dark Lord has no need for NEWT-level Defense Against the Dark Arts."

"...and since you avoid Slughorn's parties, and sit far away from me at meals, and root against my team at Quidditch matches, staying here was the only way I could come up with to talk to you."

This made Snape frown. He'd feared something like it when Potter had tried to sign up for his class with the other seventh-years, then he'd decided that Potter was simply following the Weasley girl around, though he later heard that Ginny Weasley had been responsible for all the toilets exploding in the first floor bathrooms when Potter stopped seeing her. "I have nothing else to tell you about your mother," he announced.

"My mother?" Potter's brows furrowed, then his jaw sagged. "Oh. So you _were_ in love with her."

"I most certainly was not!" The denial came out more forcefully than Snape intended, with a touch of revulsion that probably gave away things he hadn't intended to tell Potter. "She was my oldest friend. I didn't want to see her throw herself away on a man so full of bile that he tormented Slytherins, unpopular students and queers. I certainly didn't want to see her dead." Potter was looking at him oddly, and Snape realized that perhaps he shouldn't have mentioned queers. "Since I cannot give you any profound insight into your parents..."

"I don't want insight into my parents," declared Potter, coming around the table toward Snape. Indeed, it did appear that the pornographic literature might have produced a bulge in Potter's jeans. "I'd rather have insights into you."

"What are you doing? Stop that at once!" Snape backed up a step as Potter advanced. His face was very close, his smile very knowing. What did Potter think he knew?

"You smell good. I always noticed that. Sometimes, last year, when I was on the run, I would get a whiff of something that smells like this and I would think about you. I suppose it might have been you, now that I know you were watching over --"

"You're delusional," Snape said, his knees backing into one of the broad bookshelves. Potter shook his head.

"I'm not. I'm aroused, intrigued, interested, but not delusional. Not even a little bit." Potter smelled good too, and the bulge in his trousers was close enough now to feel as he leaned in to Snape. "Kiss me."

"You're a student --" Snape began, then immediately realized the huge error he had committed.

Potter's grin sprang the trap. "That didn't sound like 'I'm not queer' or 'I'm not attracted to you,' he pointed out, planting his feet against Snape's. 

"Nevertheless you _are_ a student --" Snape insisted, trying to regain control of the conversation, and of his libido, which had suddenly taken on a life of its own. 

"Several years over age, though," Potter said, his gaze dropping to Snape's mouth. "Well, if you won't kiss me--"

Gamely Snape tried to master the flash of disappointment that unaccountably stabbed through him. Surely this was for the best, surely Potter was up to something and Snape was determined to discover....

"I suppose I'll just have to kiss you," declared Potter, and suddenly his lips were pressing Snape's, and Snape, unable to back away any further, was trying to decide best how to resist even as his resistance began to melt away.

"This is a terrible idea," he muttered when Potter finally came up for air. Somehow Snape's fingers had become entangled in the back of Potter's jumper, which he released at once.

Again Potter grinned. "That still doesn't sound like 'I'm not interested.'"

His lips returned to Snape's, tongue seeking entrance, so that when Snape opened his mouth to object again, he found himself being kissed even more deeply and thoroughly. There could be no doubt that Potter was fully erect in his jeans -- an erection which felt impressively large, for, as Potter had pointed out, it belonged to someone who was legally an adult -- and that the pressure of a hard prick against his own had Snape twitching and throbbing as well.

"Besides, if you weren't interested, you wouldn't have come looking for me," continued Potter, apparently able to speak without whimpering, a skill Snape lacked just at the moment. "You didn't really think I was going to blow up the school after I almost died to stop Voldemort. You didn't really think I was going to blow _you_ up, either, considering that I saved your life."

This was true, though Snape had imagined that Potter had only done so out of a sense of obligation. Though he'd relived the scene in his mind over and over, Snape couldn't guess what had made Potter think to put his mouth on Snape's seemingly lifeless throat to suck out the serpent's venom. It didn't come up in any known book of treatments, though Madam Pomfrey believed it had only worked because Potter was a Parselmouth and it was rare luck, perhaps even unprecedented, to have a Parselmouth nearby during a snake attack.

When Snape had come out of the death-like trance, swooning from loss of blood and vaguely aroused, the first thing he'd been aware of was Potter crouched over him like a vampire, lips fastened on his throat. He'd managed to croak a protest, and ever since, he had refused to let himself think about Potter's mouth. Until now.

"I'm not your student," Potter murmured, his lips much too close to Snape's. "You haven't taught me anything since your memories told me how to save the world. But there are things I want you to teach me, and I bet you can guess what."

Potter should have been a Slytherin. Clearly, he had planned every detail: he'd waited until he knew the school would be entirely devoid of students and faculty, then he'd lured Snape to him by...oh fuck, Potter was kissing him again, and Snape was kissing back, grinding his prick against Potter's through their clothes. "This had better not be a joke," he warned during a pause to breathe.

"Do I feel like I'm joking? I haven't stopped thinking about you for months. So much that I had to break up with my best friend's sister and tell my best friend I'm gay."

That sounded like a terrifying prospect to Snape, who had never had the courage to tell his own youthful best friend -- Potter's mother -- that he was gay. Yet Potter did not appear traumatized. He was grinning.

"And since you wouldn't let me take your class, I did homework about you instead. I know I'm not the only one who looks at those books in the Restricted Section. I saw some very interesting pictures in them of things I'd like to do right now." Potter's fingers strayed down Snape's back to his bum.

Snape had had enough of being teased, for surely that was what this was -- an attempt to draw him out so that Potter could then mock him. "Perhaps I shall give you more than you bargained for," he growled, sliding a hand between them and curling his fingers around Potter's -- oh yes, that really was quite impressive -- erection.

Potter groaned and his eyes rolled back, but he was certainly not trying to get away from Snape's hand. In fact, he was pushing into it. "Oh yes! Give me more!" he demanded.

"What was the most...intriguing thing you saw in those books?" Snape asked, feeling Potter's fingers falter at the question. Snape pressed back against him and Potter's hand moved again, squeezing Snape's bum through his robes. 

"There wasn't anything that I saw that wasn't intriguing when I imaged the two of us doing it," admitted Potter, his hips close enough to Snape's to impart details of both pricks, had either of them been capable of analyzing such information. Hard, thick, eager, that was all the detail Snape's mind could process, even as Potter's mouth drew out details of breath and desire. 

"What if I ordered you to suck my prick? Right here?" Snape could tell by the shudder that went through Potter that the idea was not unwelcome. 

"Fuck, even hearing you say it like that nearly made me --" The color crept up Potter's cheeks, though he didn't look embarrassed; he looked like he was about to drop to his knees and carry out Snape's order. 

"You would do it, wouldn't you? Right here in the Restricted Section?" Snape said, grabbing Potter's jumper before he did just that. Potter looked up, puzzled, gratifyingly dazed and aroused. It was a heady look and Snape's prick throbbed in response. 

"Why not? There's no one else in the castle, you want to, I want to, though you might have to --" Potter's cheek was coloring again as Snape's fingers released his sleeve, "-- you know, show me or give me pointers." Potter did slide to his knees, his hands molding up Snape's legs, tilting his face as though looking for permission, permission Snape had probably given when he first caught Potter alone.

This was madness. If Severus Snape was going to risk a long and moderately successful if not entirely satisfying teaching career over a student, he should at least have had the sense to do it in the privacy of his bedroom in the dungeon. Yet he found himself rooted to the spot when Potter's hands slid around Snape's hips and reached under his robes, unfastening his trousers more quickly than Snape believed possible of a novice. "Not the first time you've done that?" he growled, his voice once again revealing more than he intended.

"Only with girls," sighed Potter, making a bit of a face as his fingers went to work tugging the trousers down. "It was bad enough being the Chosen One -- I couldn't have coped with being the Gay Chosen One. Everyone got bored with me once I came back to school, though, and started getting As instead of Os in History of Magic. Not really Auror material any more, am I?"

Snape was about to retort that he'd never thought Potter would fit in among the hidebound prigs at the Ministry when Potter leaned down and his tongue took a swipe over the head of Snape's prick. "Yes!" Snape groaned instead, clutching at Potter's hair to encourage him to do it again.

"Mmmm!" Potter hummed agreement, lowering his mouth over Snape's prick.

What Potter lacked in experience, he made up for in enthusiasm, though in truth it had been so long since anyone besides Snape himself had touched that particular bit that even terrible fellatio would have been appreciated by said bit. Plus Snape could hear Potter using his free hand to open his own trousers, and even in the dim light in the Restricted Section, with Potter's body blocking most of the view, Snape could see Potter's elbow moving rhythmically when Potter began to stroke himself.

This was going to be an embarrassingly quick --

"Fuck!" roared Snape, tightening his hand in Potter's hair to warn him to stop. However, as was so often the case with Potter, Snape found his instructions ignored. Potter bobbed his head on Snape's prick as he rocked on his knees, thrusting into his own hand. The shudder that began deep in Potter's loins shook his entire body, so that Snape could feel Potter's head quivering as Potter let out a muffled grunt around Snape's prick and ejaculated over his own hand onto Snape's trouser leg.

Any man would have had an orgasm worthy of conjuring his Patronus after witnessing such a sight. For Snape -- who'd been steadfastly refusing to let himself wank while imagining Potter's mouth doing just what it was doing now -- it worked like one of the banned climax-enhancement potions he'd occasionally been offered large sums to produce. He had no choice but to surrender, coming so hard that he forgot where he was and shouted Potter's name.

By the time Snape could see clearly again, Potter was grinning up at him, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. "I think you woke all the ghosts," crowed Potter. "At least you called me 'Harry.'" When Snape did not immediately reply, unable to catch his breath to do so, Potter added, "Now be fair. You can't give me a D when you came too."

"I knew you'd be glib," Snape finally managed, though he realized at once that his mouth had skipped ahead without consulting his no-doubt lust-fogged brain. 

Instead of the gleeful gloating Snape expected, Potter's still-breathless smile bordered on shy. "I knew you wouldn't stop me." He gave Snape's softening prick a wet kiss, rocking back on his heels and holding out a hand which Snape took, as though they'd just engaged in a particularly rigorous Defense lesson instead of hormone-carbonating sex. Then Potter's cocky smile was back. "I'm not glib, just honest. Witty banter isn't my strong suit. But you did call me ‘Harry.'"

"I'm not averse to using your given name," Snape said, feeling a bit vulnerable with his prick dangling out of his trousers, but Potter's was dangling as well and Snape was enjoying the view too much to rush to change it. 

"I wasn't sure you knew it," replied Potter, standing very close to Snape, so close that their slack trousers brushed. Then with a smirk he added, "Severus."

Snape's eyes narrowed, but his rebuttal was cut off when Potter kissed him again, blithely assuming Snape would not object to the taste, though when added to Potter's mouth, the taste was muted and not at all bad. 

"You should take me to bed," Potter said. "I bet it would be ten times better in bed, a thousand times." While Snape's dignity glared at the presumption, his prick once again interjected its quite opposing position and practically perked up in support of something a thousand times better than what it had just done. Unfortunately the silence must have gone on too long, because Potter's face fell. "I mean, it doesn't have to be tonight, if you don't want..."

"You may be glib but you're still thick," growled Snape, reaching over to tuck Potter's bit back in, not minding at all that it felt possessive. Potter after all had had Snape's prick in his mouth while Snape had never managed to touch any part of him. 

"I am?" said Potter, his voice quavering, though whether at Snape's hand so close to his sensitive bits or at the kiss that followed, Snape had no notion. "I mean, I am, thick."

Giving the front of Potter's trousers a pat, Snape shifted his attention to his own exposed parts. Once they were both respectable enough for any wandering startled ghost, he said, "And young enough, I expect, for another go, if the circumstances were right."

Potter's smile lit up the room like a _Lumos_ charm. "It is Christmas Eve," he pointed out. "We should be celebrating. And I'm definitely young enough for another go or two."

As usual, Potter was getting ahead of himself, but for once Snape found that he did not mind. He might not have been as young as Potter, but if his prick's current level of interest was anything to go by, he would not have any trouble keeping up. Thus far, his Christmas presents consisted of a bottle of firewhisky from Minerva and the usual framed holiday photo of the Malfoy family, looking rather worse for wear this year. Snape felt that he was entitled to a more appropriate keepsake, like Potter's Quidditch-toned bum.

"I have no fruitcake or pudding," he warned Potter.

"That's not what I'm hungry for." Potter's arm slid through Snape's, steering him toward the exit from the library. "I want more of what I had before. Lots more."

"And when the others return to school?" Snape asked sharply.

"Then we'll have to be much sneakier." When had Potter's youthful grin, never directed at Snape and seen only from a distance, become so suggestively wicked? "You know I'm up for the challenge."

Snape tried not to get ahead of himself, either. But as they turned into the corridor and Peeves soared past, making a rude face, he could not resist smirking and saying, "The Ghost of Christmas Future foresees detentions in your days to come."

"Fine with me, as long as the Ghost of Christmas Present sees you taking me to the dungeon right now." They grinned at each other, and Snape was forced to conclude that Potter's nefarious inclinations were not without merit.


	2. Christmas Night

The dungeon corridors were chilly, but Snape's bedroom was warm and bright, as if one of the ghosts had guessed that he would soon be returning and warned the house elves to build up the fire. He looked around suspiciously, but there was no intrusive elf to be seen.

"The Slytherin colors make it look almost Christmas-y." Potter grinned as he peered past Snape at the curtains hiding all but the posts of the oversized bed. His eyes moved to the small cauldron and unlit burner in the corner. "You're allowed to brew potions in here?"

"Since I taught that subject for many long years, I believe that the Headmistress feels I can be trusted not to blow up the school," Snape informed him.

Potter only laughed. "I didn't think you missed Potions. I thought you always wanted to teach Defense. Do you miss being a Head of House?"

"Telling whingeing first-years to wipe their snotty noses and catching NEWT-level students at their puerile pranks?" scoffed Snape. Again Potter giggled, making Snape wonder when Potter had begun to appreciate his sense of humor. Potter -- _Harry_ , he reminded himself -- had never seemed to comprehend Snape's dry wit before.

Harry was stroking a hand down a heavy velvet drape hanging from Snape's bedpost in a manner that seemed very erotic. At least, Snape's prick thought so, and gave a small twitch to remind him that it hadn't forgotten why he had brought Harry to this room. "I haven't committed any puerile pranks recently," Harry assured him. "I had more grownup games in mind."

“Did you now?” Snape said, habitually loosening the top of his robes before he realized how suggestive it might appear to the admittedly oversexed Harry. “Tell me what you’re imagining.”

Without asking permission, though Snape wasn’t sure what he would have said if Harry had asked, Harry slithered on top of the bed. “Nice,” he said, giving the mattress an experimental bounce, before turning his head to answer Snape’s question with a question of his own. “Do you mean right this moment, or in the months I’ve been thinking of us?”

Before Snape could accuse him of pranking him again, Harry waved his hand toward the top of Snape’s robes. “Go on, you didn’t have to stop.”

Instead of complying, Snape loosened the buttons on his sleeves, shaking them both out, surprising himself by not feeling self-conscious under Harry’s regard. “Right now,” he clarified, feeling he had scored several points in whatever game he and Harry were playing when Harry had to visibly collect himself to answer Snape’s question.

“I imagined I’d take off all my clothes and beseech you to initiate me into a world of pleasure only ever hinted at.” Harry reached for his shirt as if to make good this very fantasy.

Again Snape's prick announced its interest in doing precisely what Harry had suggested. Snape realized that he was staring, and had stopped undressing himself to do so. It wasn't as if Harry hadn't just seen him with his trousers open in the library. "You may be disappointed," he warned, returning to work on his robes. "I am hardly an expert in the world of pleasure."

Harry only shrugged. "That's all right -- I also imagined we'd make it up as we went along and for once you wouldn't have to tell me what a disappointment I was."

"I was trying to keep you focused so that you could stay alive," Snape said sharply, hands falling away from his half-open shirt, but once again Harry was smiling, climbing off the bed with his own shirt open to take up where Snape had left off.

"I know you were. I know how much you gave up to keep me alive." Harry's fingers slid inside Snape's clothing, stroking his chest and up to his throat, apparently unconcerned with the fact that Snape was scarred and in no way as attractive as a young Quidditch player like Harry himself. "I don't really have any expectations -- I haven't done enough to know what it's supposed to be like. I just know I Iike this..."

Again Harry pressed close, letting Snape feel a prick that was every bit as enthusiastic as his own. Growling softly, Snape pushed back, sliding his hands down the muscular back to squeeze Harry's firm bum so that he couldn't pull away.

With a soft gasp, Harry added, "And since it feels like you do too, maybe we could do a lot more of it."

Snape was not in the mood to discuss the particulars of the long, enforced celibacy he had endured all these years, nor the furtive experiments and inevitable disappointments of his experiences before that. Instead, since Harry had turned his face up hopefully, he kissed Harry's inviting lips. Harry kissed the same way he argued, with more enthusiasm than skill and with a passion that drew out Snape’s own. He’d had so few chances to give his desires free rein, so few candidates who’d expressed any sort of interest in his kissing technique. 

With a moan, Harry threw his arms around Snape’s neck, his entire body an open invitation. Snape couldn’t fathom why Harry wanted him, opportunity at being alone in the castle most probably, or why Harry hadn’t taken shameless advantage of his exalted position in the wizarding world to have any lover he wanted. 

“Let me--” Harry said, not drawing his mouth very far away from Snape’s lips. What he wanted to be allowed to do was lost as he kissed Snape again, pulling a satisfied noise from his throat before Harry pulled back again, trying to speak again. “Want--” He started to kiss Snape again, his technique improving with each foray against Snape’s mouth. He swallowed, gazing up at Snape though slightly misted glassed. “Want to see you.” His gaze slide back into focus. “Naked, I mean.”

It was appalling how much Snape wanted to be naked, but there was no sense in giving in to Harry too easily. “You have hands,” Snape said, as his own trailed up Harry’s back. “Clever ones, if I recall.” 

“I thought you never thought any part of me was clever,” Harry said, maneuvering them both back against the bed, pinning Snape against the edge. 

“I never lost faith that you could be taught,” corrected Snape, his faith rewarded when Harry started undoing buttons with a concentration he’d never put into any potion he concocted. He tugged Snape’s shirt free, giving his own a quick jerk so that their chests were suddenly both bare and both pressing together. His voice grew husky as he asked, "What, precisely, were you hoping to learn?"

"To make love," replied Harry in a gratifyingly breathless voice. Snape was about to demand to know whether Harry understood the difference between making love and just fucking, since he was certain that Harry only intended the latter, when Harry added, "It doesn't have to be sex right away, if you don't want. Though if you do want sex, that's fine with me. I want whatever will make us both feel really good." He gave a wriggle for emphasis.

If it could have talked, Snape's prick would have voiced its opinion that indeed it wanted sex, preferably right this moment, even though it had already received more attention that night than in several previous years. Snape very nearly said the same thing, but for both their sakes he wished to be certain he understood what Harry was offering. "Am I correct in assuming that you have no experience having this sort of sex?" he asked.

How did Harry always manage to conjure a laugh when any reasonable person would be embarrassed or nervous? "I don't have experience having any sort of sex in the actual sex sense," he admitted. "Just some fooling around with girls and some -- you know."

He made a slight wanking movement with his hand, and even though Snape had seen him do that very thing not long before, while Harry was sucking Snape's prick, the gesture made Snape moan.

That, too, made Harry smile. "I've tried putting my fingers in my arse. Nothing as big as your cock, but you must know by now I'm very eager to try it."

At that point, Snape and his prick were of precisely the same mind. If Harry was going to offer himself so shamelessly, it would be prudish -- idiotic, even -- not to give him what he wanted. "Very well, but there will be no rushing," he said, promptly feeling ridiculous for sounding so professorial, but Harry looked pleased.

"I learned from the Half-Blood Prince's book that some things work better if you do them slowly." Carefully, as if Snape might lower his marks otherwise, Harry slid his hands down Snape's naked belly to unfasten his trousers. The hands slid into the waistband, gently pushing down trousers and pants until they dropped to the floor by themselves.

Normally, or what Snape remembered from the few times he’d been in this position, he felt awkward and exposed. Somehow, this time, he didn’t. He waited a beat for the flood of awkwardness to wash over him, but he still felt aroused.

“Did I do something wrong?” Harry asked, looking uncertain for the first time since Snape had discovered him in the Restricted Section. 

Snape shook his head. “Only that you’re wearing far too many clothes for our purposes tonight.” 

Harry looked relieved at once. His gaze travelled down Snape’s legs, lingering over his prick. “I just can’t believe I can look at you like this,” he said, recovering his aplomb, as indeed Snape was himself. Even with his many flaws, of body as well as temperament, Harry wanted to learn things about pleasure from Snape’s hand. And prick, he added mentally as his prick throbbed in response.

Reaching for Harry’s trousers, Snape loosened them and looked up before continuing, unable to quite shake off the professorial mien. Breathlessly, Harry nodded, and then they were both naked from the waist down. As if he couldn’t wait a moment longer, Harry started kissing him again. Snape’s arms went around him, Harry’s shirt tails dangling over his arms.

“I can’t believe I can kiss you like this,” said Harry, though the words were more kiss than sentence as he hardly stopped to speak before pulling Snape’s lips against his own. 

"I would never have guessed that you wanted to," Snape murmured, pushing at Harry's shirt. Harry was indeed as fit as Snape had recalled from the icy woods where he'd hidden the Sword of Gryffindor, though a bit thin -- likely Harry hadn't recovered from those months on the run. He was nearly as pale as Snape, though hairier than Snape would have guessed. He liked that a naked Harry looked more like a man than he'd let himself remember.

Harry's glasses had tilted over his nose during their kisses. Grinning, he reached up to straighten them. "I know I should take them off, but I can't see more than a few inches from my face without them and I want to keep looking at you."

"There are spells that might improve your vision. Or there's the Muggle solution -- contact lenses."

"Do you want me to take them off? I mean -- my mother's eyes -- " Again Harry looked uncertain, at least until Snape shook his head.

"Your eyes are your own." It was true, Snape thought, not without some guilt. He'd known he was lying to Dumbledore when he'd claimed he cared about Harry only because Harry was Lily's son, though he had felt equal parts resentment that Harry would likely never know or care what Snape had sacrificed in his name.

As if Harry could read his mind, he said, "I don't want you to see my parents when you look at me. I want you to see me." He kissed Snape again, hands clutched possessively around his back. "I know I didn't do as much for you as you did for me --"

"You saved the world!" Snape interrupted, wondering once more whether Harry was mocking him.

He felt more than heard Harry's laughter against his own mouth. "Only because you told me how. We saved it together. Now we can do other things together." There was nothing uncertain about the way Harry tugged Snape toward the bed, pushing their clothes aside with his foot.

Following his prick, which was following Harry, Snape tumbled into his own bed, wrapped in an armful of Harry. They were kissing again as though Harry couldn’t get enough of him, which was enough of a novel feeling in his bed to draw some breathy noises from Snape’s throat. Fingers stroked along his Adam’s apple. “I like that,” purred Harry, pressing his mouth where his fingers had been. 

Throwing one leg over Harry’s brought their pricks together and they both made a noise of pleasure and kissed again to share it. “You’re rushing,” admonished Snape, though he couldn’t fault Harry when he was kissing back as much as being kissed.

“You’re arousing me,” Harry said, grinning again, mostly, Snape suspected, to catch his breath. “You always arouse me, in classes, in lessons, in the corridors, in the Restricted Section...”

That, surely was an exaggeration, though Snape had lost the will to untangle what Harry wanted and what he was making Snape want. “You’re young and easily aroused,” Snape tried, though the argument had lost a bit of its urgency in the new urgency of Harry’s prick rubbing against his.

“Then why is it always you that arouses me? I lived in a dorm full of boys, changed in Quidditch locker rooms with them and you’re the one that brought me back to school, because I want to do this.” _This_ brought another moan to them both and Harry went back to explaining in a way in which Snape couldn’t argue, with an urgent kiss.

He knew better than to think about how much or how long he'd been aroused by Harry. Harry had only barely been of age that night when Snape had watched him strip off and dive to retrieve the sword in the woods. "How many fingers?" he asked between kisses, unable to evade the image that had lurked in his mind since Harry had first mentioned his own forays into the sort of lovemaking he had proposed.

"How many -- oh! Inside me?" Harry's cheeks turned a becoming shade of red. "Usually two. I couldn't get into a really comfortable position to use three."

Snape could not help groaning at the thought of Harry with his legs drawn up so that he could put his fingers in his own arse. "We'll have to get you properly stretched," he said.

Harry's groan was just as loud as his own had been. "Oh fuck! If I last that long."

Though Snape was aware that he himself might be good only for one more go this evening, he suspected that wasn't true for someone as young and fit as Harry. "There's no rush, remember?" he insisted, rocking his hips so that his prick thrust over Harry's. "If you don't last, we shall begin again."

"Oh God," moaned Harry, eyes fluttering shut behind the glasses before they opened again. "There should be a don't-come-too-fast spell."

In fact, Snape had once discovered such a spell, but he was in no mood for manipulating Harry's natural responses with magic. "Try concentration," he said in what he thought was a stern professorial manner, but rather than intimidating Harry, it only made him moan louder.

"I can't concentrate on not coming when you're rubbing off against me and talking to me like that!"

Snape resorted to a tried and true maxim from his teaching experience: When in doubt, threaten. “If you come before I have you ready, you will spend the rest of the evening wondering what it would be like to have my cock inside you.”

Harry’s hips jerked reflexively against Snape’s. “Are you trying to get me to disgrace myself? Because it will take me a bit to recover enough for another--” His eyes narrowed. “You aren’t trying to make me go off so you can get rid of me, are you?”

Snape must have looked startled because Harry looked sheepish at once, as though he’d answered his own question. “I’m staying the night, whether we finish like this or in some other delightful way,” he insisted. 

“Are you so certain it will be delightful?” countered Snape, though he had no interest in making Harry leave, not when there were so many erotic possibilities spinning through the dusty corridor of his brain where his most prurient desires lay. 

Harry made a noise of disbelief. “It’s _already_ delightful. I have high hopes for amazing by morning.” He grinned and lifted one knee in clear invitation. 

“Then don’t come too fast and we’ll find amazing, then possibly spectacular,” agreed Snape, replying to the invitation--and the promise--with another kiss. 

Harry returned the kiss, though his lips broke it off when he felt Snape reach back to summon his wand. He watched curiously rather than nervously as Snape aimed the wand at Harry's bottom. "Is that for a lube spell?" he asked.

"A cleaning spell," Snape replied, flushing a bit. He did not want Harry to find him fastidious, but given that this was Harry's first time, he also did not want any lack of planning to interfere. Grinning, Harry nodded in understanding, wriggling a bit. "As for lubrication, I'm sure you have discovered that there are spells, but I find that potions greatly enhance the experience."

Harry's eyes followed Snape as he opened a drawer in the table beside the bed, hoping not to be asked questions about how he used the aforementioned potion when he had only himself in the bed for such activities. "I tried a spell on myself," Harry said. "I didn't know where to get a potion -- I didn't want to ask in Slug and Jiggers and I didn't dare try to brew one. There aren't, um, dead slugs or anything in it?"

"Only plants," Snape assured him, spilling some of the oil over his fingers and holding them out for Harry to smell. To his surprise, Harry flicked out his tongue, grinning at Snape's moan.

"Tastes kind of buttery," was Harry's verdict.

Snape smirked at him. "I'll be sure to try it once it's applied." He rubbed a finger behind Harry's balls, feeling a surge of pleasure as Harry's eyes went round.

"You aren't going to put your mouth...oh fuck!" The other knee lifted as Harry tilted his hips upward.

“Of course I am, I’m going to put it everywhere on you, and if you keep making those sorts of noises I may let you do the same to me.” He leaned down and flicked his tongue over the swollen tip of the prick before him, drawing forth another gratifying noise. 

“Everywhere?” panted Harry, peering down at Snape from between his upraised knees. 

Spilling out more of the slippery potion, Snape rubbed his finger around the beckoning entrance and nodded. “Everywhere. Here...” He tipped his finger in slowly, waiting for any sort of protestation. There was none, unless he counted the needy noises escaping from Harry’s throat, though they held no hint of displeasure. 

“I meant you,” Harry managed, “you’ll let me kiss you, use my mouth on you everywhere?”

That startled Snape, who had never expected Harry would desire such intimacies when they brought him no direct physical pleasure. “Everywhere,” he confirmed, with little real expectation that Harry would want to once his initial lusts were satisfied. And Snape intended to satisfy them quite thoroughly. Pushing in a little further he felt Harry relaxing further, as though the answer had been some sort of tension inside him. 

“Going to,” Harry said, his voice rougher now, edged with lust or passion. “Going to learn how to do this and learn all the things you like.” 

“I like this,” Snape said, looking up long enough to see Harry’s reaction when he slid his finger in deeper. Harry, it seemed, did too.

“Feels better when you do it,” he moaned. “Much, much better.”

Unable to resist smiling at this, Snape crooked the finger. He did not need to ask whether Harry liked that; from the way Harry thrashed and cried out, it was quite apparent.

"Fuck!" gasped Harry. "Oh God, if you keep doing that I'll never last no matter how hard I concentrate!"

"That's how it's going to feel with my prick inside you," promised Snape, sliding back the finger and pushing it in with a second. Harry did not protest. He groaned, squeezing them with his inner muscles.

"That's how it's going to feel around your prick when it's inside me! Please, let me have it before I can't wait!"

Though it had been many years, Snape remembered how nervous he had been his first time. Harry, however, seemed far more eager than nervous. He pushed in three fingers together, expecting Harry to wince, but Harry only groaned again and tilted his hips to give Snape more room to maneuver. "I'm not hurting you?" he asked Harry.

"No, oh God no, just making me want more of you! Please!"

Harry was practically begging. With a soft groan, Snape nodded, withdrawing his fingers. "Just let me..." he said, reaching for the potion.

"Oh no, let me." Grinning, Harry sat partway up, taking the bottle and spilling some of the slippery potion onto his fingers before reaching for Snape's prick. Now it was Snape’s turn to worry that he might not be able to wait, pushing into Harry’s fingers like a randy schoolboy. 

“Not too fast,” he cautioned, daring a glance at Harry’s slick fingers working over his prick. He closed his eyes quickly because his entire body reacted to the sight. 

“No rushing,” Harry replied, smiling, once Snape dared a peek, and looking pleased for having echoed Snape’s own instructions back to him. “I want to take this nice and slow...”  
He was definitely teasing now, but Snape didn’t feel mocked. He felt he and Harry had some sort of private joke, something Snape had only ever had with himself, usually to the detriment of the object of the joke. 

“Any slower and I’ll finish before we learn much more than this,” cautioned Snape, and Harry chuckled, drawing his hand away. 

Leaning back in the bed with his knees raised, his eyes held Snape’s, and even through the glasses which Harry had steadfastly not removed, Snape sensed the uncertainty and longing behind the gaze. How long had Harry wanted this? And why had he waited for Snape? “Young and eager, remember?” Harry said, voice full of bravado again, which, Snape reflected, had sometimes made up for Harry’s lack of skills.

"You will tell me if I'm hurting you," Snape ordered as he shifted over Harry, and, when he sensed that Harry was about to protest, stopped moving. "Promise me, or I shall stop right now."

"I promise." Harry's cheeks flushed, but his gaze grew warmer, as though he hadn't been entirely certain that Snape wouldn't simply take what he wanted with little concern for Harry's pleasure. "Do I, um, am I supposed to touch myself?"

"Not yet." Slowly Snape brushed his prick along the slick furrow, realizing that he hadn't kept his own promise to put his mouth there. Afterward, then. He pressed down, feeling Harry inhale sharply. "All right?"

"Oh God, yes! I imagined this so many times!" Harry's hips moved, forcing the head of Snape's prick past the tight entrance, impaling Harry on the shaft. "Please, move!"

Movement, Snape well recalled, made the burn of entry ease. He rocked his hips, sliding in and out, a bit deeper each time, waiting for Harry to adjust. "Better?"

"Yes, more, please!"

Whether the strain in Harry's voice came from urgency or discomfort, Snape couldn't tell, but his own prick was far too eager to continue for him to wish to stop to discuss it. Instead he reached for Harry's prick, concluding from its stiffness in his hand that Harry couldn't be in too much discomfort if he could maintain such an impressive erection.

"Oh fuck yes do that!" Harry's arse clenched around Snape as he moved his hand on Harry's prick, smirking at the discovery that Harry was just as pushy in bed as in every other aspect of his life. It was, he reflected in the part of his brain not actively engaged in thrusting, reassuring to have Harry’s clear personality shining through the erotic haze of learning so many new things about him.

"Like this?” asked Snape, giving a slow stroke, matching his own outward thrust, “or like this?” The movements were faster, two or three hand motions for each jerk of Snape’s hips. 

“Yes, oh yes,” demanded Harry, without committing to either effort, instead pushing himself shamelessly into Snape’s fingers, in this, as in all things, setting his own course. “Can’t--” he panted, looking at Snape pleadingly. 

“Yes, you can,” growled Snape, though he hadn’t meant--well, hadn’t _exactly_ meant--to growl. 

“Oh fuck,” wailed Harry, and Snape felt the shudder as wave after wave of climax roared through Harry, erupting from his prick and convulsing him around Snape’s prick. Snape had meant to last longer, had meant to watch the transformative pleasure on Harry’s features, had meant perhaps even to lecture on the staying power of older, wiser men, but feeling Harry coming apart around him precluded any of these pleasures save the one pouring itself into Harry as if it would never stop. 

"Fuck," he muttered when he could manage to speak. Apparently he had absorbed Harry's propensity for the excessive use of that word.

Harry was still groaning, clutching at Snape with arms and legs and interior muscles that clamped down on Snape's still-sensitive prick. "We did," Harry panted, managing to sound satisfied and smug despite his breathlessness. "We still are."

Snape peered at him. Harry's glasses had fogged up but it was still apparent that his eyes were wide and he was smiling. "Did it live up to your imagination?" Snape asked him gruffly.

"The real thing is so much better." Harry gave him a squeeze, inside and out. "Did I do it all right?"

Snape felt his already-flushed cheeks turn an even darker shade of red. "You must know that I enjoyed it."

"Mmmhmm." Harry was grinning, practically crowing his pride. "You make a lot of noise when you come."

"You make a lot of noise before you come," retorted Snape, though Harry's smile was, apparently, infectious.

“Noise is good, right? Because I don’t think I can be quiet next time either,” said Harry, who lifted his head just enough to kiss the side of Snape’s mouth. “Unless we’re under my Invisibility Cloak in the Restricted Section. I could probably be quiet for that.” He grinned again.

“I know what you’re doing,” Snape replied, turning his face to get a bit more of the still breathless kiss. 

“I’ve never been subtle,” said Harry, completely unrepentant. His knees were pressing into Snape’s side, and he squeezed them for emphasis. 

“Let’s get through one night before we discuss adventures in exploratory lovemaking in forbidden areas,” Snape cautioned.

Harry blinked. “You know, even when you say ‘exploratory lovemaking’ it’s pretty hot.” He made a face that Snape wasn’t entirely certain was pleasurable. “You called it--”

The yawning chasm of his words stretched out between them. “It’s all right, I plan to Obliviate you before you can attach any meaning to it,” Snape said. 

Harry, comfortingly, blanched. “You don’t--” he began, but Snape was rolling his eyes and Harry’s grin, albeit more sheepish and less cocksure, returned. “You had me going.” 

“You’re ridiculously easy to get going,” replied Snape. His softened prick had slid free and he remembered his earlier promise to show Harry more varieties of sexual experience, though he was quite certain neither of them would be up for another go for several more hours. 

“Fair enough, but you can’t go around tossing out things like 'exploratory lovemaking' without getting me going in every way,” Harry grinned, pulling himself close to Snape, grunting because Snape was shifting over to his nightstand, reaching for his wand to clean up the wet spot. Harry watched as he did this curiously. "Are you going to clean me up, too?"

"Not with the wand," retorted Snape, setting it down and reaching for Harry's hand. With a puzzled expression, Harry squeezed his fingers, but Snape was already lifting Harry's arm, placing it on the pillow above Harry's head.

"What are you --" The words cut off with a sharp gasp as Snape's mouth descended, licking inside Harry's bicep. "Oh fuck!"

"You are inordinately fond of that word," observed Snape, brushing his chin through the tuft of hair in Harry's armpit, which thankfully did not smell of Slug & Jiggers deodorant nor any horrible Muggle chemicals. He nuzzled the wiry hair, earning another gasp.

"You can't expect me not to use that word when you do things like that!" moaned Harry, raising his other arm. With a soft chuckle, Snape rubbed his chin across Harry's chest to nuzzle that side, too. "You really meant it about putting your mouth...everywhere?"

Snape glanced up at Harry's eager expression and allowed a wicked smile to turn up the corners of his mouth. After a moment he felt a groan vibrate Harry's chest as Harry's legs lifted up around him.

"Please!"

For someone who had never shown any awareness of manners toward his professor, Harry was polite to the point of fawning toward his lover. With a soft chuckle, Snape licked through the thick armpit hair, feeling Harry groan and writhe in a most delightful manner before he moved down, shifting his weight onto his elbows so that Harry could raise his hips.

Harry was moving restlessly, though Snape had merely to focus on a particular area to get him to go still there. “That’s--” he said, more than once, never completing the sentence except with moans. 

“Hmmmm yes?” Snape coaxed, rubbing his chin down the center of Harry’s chest, rubbing his cheek in the luxuriant hair feathering up below his navel. “You were saying something? How can I tell what pleases you if you can’t....” He dragged his tongue back up Harry’s chest, teasingly avoiding going any lower then his belly. “Tell me.” His mouth latched onto one nipple.

“That’s--” Harry wailed, pushing his fingers into Snape’s hair. “Fuck, how can I tell you when everything feels good!”

“I’m just cleaning you up, as you requested,” replied Snape, his voice softening to nearly a purr as he felt Harry undulate beneath him. “We did get a bit sweaty in our tumble.” Harry’s hand felt good in his hair and he turned his face into the stroke, letting Harry’s fingers brush his cheek.

"Sweaty and sticky," agreed Harry, brushing a finger across Snape's mouth. Snape parted his lips to suck on it, making Harry groan loudly again. "Oh very sticky especially in certain places!"

Snape knew exactly where Harry wanted him to put his mouth, but he wanted to hear Harry say it. "Which places?" he asked, releasing one finger onto to lick another.

Even from this awkward angle, looking up at Harry, Snape could see that he was blushing. "You said you wanted to taste the lube," he reminded Snape breathlessly.

Snape could not resist a naughty smile. "Where?" he asked again.

"Oh fuck, my arse!" Harry groaned again, lifting his legs high around Snape.

With a soft chuckle that blew warm air over Harry's belly, Snape slid lower, giving the still-soft yet twitching prick a kiss before licking around Harry's balls and behind them. "Mmmmm," he hummed, letting his lips vibrate against the sensitive skin below Harry's entrance. The reaction was every bit as gratifying as he hoped, though he was enjoying himself for his own sake. 

“One of the better blends,” Snape said, pretending to swirl a bit of the essence around on his tongue.

“Blends?” Harry said above him. Snape looked up from between his legs, enjoying the unfocused expression beneath Harry’s glasses. 

“Of lube,” replied Snape, sinking back down, leaving kisses in his wake. “Quite...acceptable.”

“Acceptable, right,” came the murmur from above, as Harry’s fingers slid into Snape’s hair. The next sounds could not truly be classified as words, though the soft gurgles of pleasure were equally gratifying. With the fingers combing through his hair, Snape was perfectly pleased to go on indefinitely, but he felt those same fingers tugging on him just enough to get his attention. 

“Hmmmm?”

“Shouldn’t I --” began Harry, but he swallowed and made a visible effort to get his eyes back in focus. “Um, you know, do you?” he finally managed, waving his other hand vaguely.

For a moment, Snape went still. No one had ever offered such a pleasure, though Snape had performed it with much less satisfying reactions. “I’m not the one with the messy arse,” he pointed out, rubbing his chin along the inner side of Harry’s thigh.

The grin was partially embarrassed. “That doesn’t mean you don’t like the way it feels, does it? I mean, if I’m any good at it? And I think you’ll let me know if I’m not.”

With his head raised, Snape could see that Harry's prick was already well on the way to recovery, despite having already had two orgasms within the space of a single evening. Snape's own prick was letting him know that it, too, was feeling extremely lively this particular evening. Perhaps his prick knew it was Christmas.

"It doesn't require any particular skill," Snape said, hearing the gruffness in his own voice. "But not everyone likes to do it. It isn't necessary..."

"I wasn't asking because I thought it was a you-blow-me, I-blow-you kind of thing," Harry interrupted somewhat indignantly. "But if you don't like being penetrated like that..."

"I do like being penetrated." That was Snape's prick talking again, taking advantage of his mouth while it wasn't busy kissing and licking Harry's arse. He blushed scarlet and lowered his head again, taking one of Harry's balls in his mouth to shut himself up.

Harry went back to making incoherent noises for a few moments, but when Snape moved his lips to pay equal attention to the other testicle, he felt it slide away from him as Harry sat up. "If you like it, then I want to do it," Harry announced. "Do I need to learn that cleaning spell?"

"I'll do it," Snape said rather breathlessly. It wasn't that he didn't trust Harry pointing a wand at his arse so much as wanting to be sure the spell was done perfectly so that Harry might want to put his tongue there again and again. Nodding in agreement, Harry shifted, looking sleek and content as he stretched arms over his head before grinning as Snape reached for his wand.

“I do want to learn it sometime,” he said, swinging one leg off the edge of the bed to give Snape room to take his place among the pillows. “Maybe not when I’m--” His hips jerked a bit, and his prick bobbed as if in response. “Distracted.”

Honestly Snape hadn’t considered that aspect, but he was happy to use it as an excuse to perform the spell on himself and crawl into the warm spot on the bed. “I’ll teach you,” he agreed, wondering if there would ever be a time when they could focus on naked magic and not...distract each other. 

He looked up to say just that but Harry was gazing down at him with such eagerness and a fair dollop of lust that the words dried up unspoken. Snape’s first instinct was to look away, his second was to voice a scathing retort. Fortunately he had a third instinct, a more true one, that caused him to reach his arms out without speaking. 

Harry took each of his hands, kneeling between his legs, allowing Snape to lower him down so that his mouth touched just over the heart beating in Snape’s chest. He took a moment to explore one of Snape's nipples with his tongue, swirling the hair around it. For someone so young, Harry had quite a bit of chest and belly hair, which Snape found reassuring. It not only reminded Snape that Harry was not only a child but perhaps suggested that Harry would not find the wiry dark hair on Snape's pale frame repulsive.

Harry's mouth moved to the other side, sucking briefly, before he slid slowly down to Snape's belly, glancing up as if he needed to be certain he had permission to continue. Snape reminded himself that in this particular instance it was permissible to give full voice to the small moans escaping from his nose. He groaned loudly as Harry's tongue circled, then pushed into his belly button.

"Just like that," Snape muttered, already imagining what it would feel like to have Harry's tongue doing it to his arsehole. His prick, which had begun to rise to attention when Harry sucked his nipples, gave a hard throb of agreement, nudging against Harry's chest. If this kept up, he was going to end up begging Harry to fuck him. Perhaps that was Harry's intention.

Harry's chin made a foray into Snape's pubic hair, brushing his prick which was trying to poke itself against any available part of Harry's body. "Tell me if it's not right," said Harry, giving Snape's prick a kiss.

Abruptly Snape winced -- in his haste to clean his arse, he had failed to clean that, and it had been inside Harry not long before -- but Harry did not appear to be offended, though his mouth continued lower, until Snape had to raise his legs to give Harry access to what lay behind his balls. If he gave into his prick’s increasing demands to be satisfied once again, he knew he would be exhausted in the morning, but he knew that if Harry wanted further lessons tonight, he wouldn’t deny him.

With that tongue, there was little Snape felt inclined to deny him.

With admirable enthusiasm, Harry pressed his face in closer, using his tongue to forge the path he’d chosen, licking wiry hairs and beneath the soft skin of Snape’s bollocks with equal indiscretion. “Tell me if I’m doing it right,” the voice drifted up from between his legs, though the words were delightfully muffled by a mouthful of something that felt quite good to have Harry’s mouth around it. 

Belatedly Snape reached down, filling his hand with Harry’s thick, slightly damp hair. “That’s--” he began, just as Harry’s tongue swirled around the sensitive skin surrounding his entrance and promptly forgot any previous definitions of ‘good’ and went straight to ‘spectacular.’ He heard a noise and realized Harry too had groaned and for a heart-stopping instant Snape thought perhaps he’d been repulsed by the intimacy. Snape mentally began bracing himself for the repercussions. Then Harry’s tongue pushed in deeper, flicking upward and back, and they both groaned again. 

“Mmmm hmmmm....” Harry said, obviously not inclined to speak, and Snape was beyond the need for words since he wasn’t sure his brain was capable of supplying any. He expressed his approval as Harry has when their positions were reversed, petting him and making approving breathy noises as his body melted into a haze of bliss.

Harry was wriggling, making the bed lurch, and Snape realized that he was rubbing himself against the sheet as he moved his tongue on Snape. From his occasional hums and moans, Harry did not object to this limited stimulation, but it seemed to Snape that Harry deserved a better reward for his efforts. "Do you want..." he began, then stopped himself. Perhaps Harry had no interest in being on top. Perhaps it was too much to ask in a single evening.

The glorious movements of Harry's tongue stopped, though Harry's breath against Snape's overstimulated entrance made Snape moan nonetheless. "Do I want what?" Harry asked rather breathlessly.

"To fuck me," Snape replied in a growl.

"Oh God, yes," moaned Harry with gratifying quickness. "Are you sure? You don't think I need more experience? I couldn't exactly concentrate when you were making love to me!"

Although _fuck_ seemed to be Harry's favorite profanity, he was apparently more sentimental about the act itself. "I think that since you have already had several orgasms this evening, you are less likely to rush and bungle it," Snape replied.

That probably wasn't the romantic reply for which Harry was hoping, but it made him laugh. "I'll try not to rush, but I can't promise anything when you make me so distracted!"

It was unalterably flattering to be able to distract Harry so thoroughly, and to hold his attention for longer than a single orgasm. Despite his inexperience Harry looked more comfortable kneeling between Snape’s legs than he’d ever looked in a Potions class.

“I should--I should,” Harry said, looking at Snape’s arse, then back at Snape’s face. “What should I do first?” 

“You’ve already got a good beginning, you just need to make room for your prick inside me.” Harry nodded, looking at once determined and boyishly sexy. 

“Right, room for prick,” he said, though Snape noted the quaver of nervousness underlying his words. Harry had always been about bravado and cheek, and making love was proving to be no exception. Considering this young man had taken on the Dark Lord and defeated him with barely more than a first year spell, his anxiousness to please Snape was doing engaging things to Snape’s prick. 

Snape passed him the potion, glad that there was quite a lot of it left. Having something to do with his hands seemed to calm Harry, as though Snape had just given him a wand. He poured out a small amount, then at Snape’s raised eyebrows, a generous bit more. Snape used the time to lift his knees again, hoping he didn’t look ridiculous with his legs spread and all his bits exposed. Somehow the warm gaze and the warmer fingers on him didn’t make him feel ridiculous, they made him feel good, as though worthy of such attention and care. 

"You won't be sorry you spent your first time with an old man?" he asked, hoping that he sounded concerned and not pathetic.

Harry's eyebrows shot up indignantly. "You are not old," he objected.

"I'm not precisely young and fit." One of Harry's fingers penetrated Snape's entrance, making him suck in a breath. "You could have your pick of..."

"Groupies?" supplied Harry, grinning a bit at the ease with which his finger slid in and out. "So could you. People who don't care who we really are or what we really want." He crooked the finger experimentally and Snape pressed down to meet the tip, groaning when it pushed in deep. "I've never wanted anyone young," added Harry with a wider, more triumphant grin. "I've never wanted anyone but you, really, and I thought I could never have you, which should have made it easier to hate you, but it never did."

"I thought I could never have you either," blurted Snape as the finger withdrew, only to press back in, accompanied by another. He couldn't be blamed for his prick taking over his thoughts at a time like this. But Harry was being too careful, and Snape grunted, "More," as he impaled himself on the seeking fingers. This time he managed to get a fingertip right where he wanted it, and he shouted in pleasure.

"Fuck! I'm not hurting you, am I?"

“If you can’t tell that was a good sound then I’m not doing it right,” Snape grumbled, still panting. “Do that again,” he growled. Harry did and this time did not start when Snape cried out in pleasure.

Harry’s grin was worth opening his eyes for. “I like you like this,” he said, moving his fingers back, no longer tentative when he slid in a second one and repeated the motion until Snape was clawing at the sheets. “I like being the one to get you like this.”

“You’re going to get me to come all over myself if you don’t give me your prick,” Snape managed, but Harry was already looking focused over how to get himself slick enough to finish without finishing too quickly. 

“You aren’t helping when you say sexy things like that,” Harry said, sounding a bit desperate, though he spilled out a bit more of the slippery potion and accomplished the task. Snape took a moment to adjust his bum and his legs, body thrumming with energy as though he was the one who was young and fit and discovering lovemaking for the first time. He wasn’t sure what to make of the ‘never wanted anyone else’ sentiment. Harry, for all his faults, had been fairly truthful in all matters erotic so far, and he had no reason to attempt to flatter Snape, not when Snape had no intention of denying him anything he wanted--tonight or any other night Harry wanted.

Harry had leaned forward, putting his weight on one hand beside Snape's waist while using the other to hold his prick steady. He pressed against Snape's entrance, too tentatively at first.

"Oh fuck, sorry --" Harry panted.

"Don't apologize. Do it again," ordered Snape, bending his knees higher. He had never seen such an expression of concentration on Harry's face -- charms and spells came so easily to Harry, and things that did not interest him as much, like Potions, rarely occupied his full attention. The expression changed to pleasure as the head of Harry's prick pushed inside of Snape. "More," Snape ordered, raising his hips to impale himself before Harry could try to pull back. He wrested a groan from Harry, who sank in steadily.

"That feels better than anything!" Harry's words were breathless as he jerked his hips, attempting a shallow thrust. "Is this right?"

"You can move," Snape told him, giving his prick a slight squeeze inside for emphasis. He loved the sound of Harry's groans. Slowly Harry slid partway back, then partway forward, and did it again, thrusting with more confidence. "Like that."

"Am I getting the right spot?"

"Let me worry about that." Carefully, so as not to dislodge Harry, Snape shifted his own hips. He was torn between reaching for his prick, since he doubted that Harry would last long this first time, or waiting so he could watch Harry's handsome face in the throes of pleasure with less distraction of his own. He compromised, sliding his hand around his prick but letting the jerky motions of Harry’s thrusting set the pace of the stroke. Slowly he canted his hips, and Harry surged in deeper. They both groaned, though each was tinged with sharper pleasure, bound together. 

“I did it right,” gasped Harry, looking more pleased by this than any other accomplishment of his young life. Considering those accomplishments, Snape was pleased. “Going to do that again,” Harry moaned, though his voice quavered, and his hips were moving more erratically.

“Just...focus,” ground out Snape, squeezing his fingers around himself. Harry was indeed as desirable and attractive as Snape had imagined he would be, even when his features were contorted with concentration. That the focus was on giving Snape this intimacy heightened Snape’s enjoyment of each stroke.

“Focus, right,” returned Harry, though his forehead was dewed with drops of sweat and color had risen on his neck. “Fo...cus...” His breathing had grown shallow and Snape gave his own prick another tug. Then Harry’s eyes snapped open, looking dazed. “Can’t--”

“Yes, you can, you can for me,” Snape breathed, prepared when Harry’s head arched back and his entire body spasmed in pleasure. “You can,” he said again, needing only a few swift tugs on his own cock to be swept up in the whirlpool of pleasure Harry had created.

With a breathless groan, Harry flopped over Snape, who was still panting as well. "Best Christmas ever," Harry crowed as if he'd invented sex just for the occasion.

With a soft grunt, Snape shifted to distribute Harry's weight more comfortably, though he had no desire to dislodge him just yet. He had no desire to quarrel with Harry's assessment, either. "It was quite satisfying," he concurred.

"Only 'quite' satisfying?" Harry's head lifted. Snape thought he had offended him and started to amend his words, but Harry was grinning from ear to ear. "If that's only 'quite,' I can't wait till we get to 'extremely satisfying.'" Wriggling, Harry shifted his weight onto his elbows. "I'm not hurting you, am I?"

"You are not." Only Snape's legs were uncomfortable, from being bent double for so long; carefully, he lowered them to the bed, trying not to dislodge Harry's prick from inside him. Feeling that some additional encouragement might be needed despite Harry's smile, he added, "You did that very well."

"That's the highest mark you've ever given me." Winking, Harry pushed himself up, letting his prick slide out of Snape's arse. With a happy sigh, he dropped to Snape's side.

"Consider it a Christmas present."

Harry’s laugh filled the room. “You know I nearly forgot it was Christmas.” Lifting up, he brushed a kiss over one cheek. “Happy Christmas.” With a sigh, he dropped back down, shifting several times before carving out a spot for himself nestled against Snape’s side. 

It was indeed, Snape reflected, as his fingers wound into Harry’s hair, a happy Christmas, a holiday not, in Snape’s experience, noted for especially happy memories. 

“I’m glad I stayed over,” Harry said, exhaling close to Snape’s chest. He butted his head against Snape’s fingers, since they had slowed in his hair. 

“You weren’t actually lying in wait for me,” Snape said, ruffling the top of Harry’s head, rationalizing that he couldn’t muss it up more than it already was. He didn’t quite make it a question.

“I was.” Harry’s head popped up again, the grin back in place. “I knew you’d come looking for me and you did.” 

“I wasn’t looking for you to seduce you!” Snape rebutted, cupping the back of Harry’s neck.

Stretching a bit, Harry kissed the side of his mouth. “I knew you wouldn’t, so I seduced you instead.” He turned his head from side to side, surveying their gloriously naked state. “I’d say that worked out well.”

Indeed, Harry could hardly have plotted a better evening to get what he had evidently wanted. Had anyone else been in the castle, Snape might well have refused him, citing rules that at this moment seemed mere technicalities and the risk of discovery, not to mention embarrassment. "You realize that this won't be possible once the others return," he said, not without regret.

"Of course it will be possible." Harry huffed faintly. "Assuming you want to do it again, which you sound like you do, we're both quite clever at being --"

"Sneaky?" Snape supplied.

"I was going to say inventive, but if you prefer sneaky, I can live with that." Harry kissed his shoulder. "We'll work out a way. It's only for a few months, anyway, then I won't be a student any more and we won't have to sneak."

It would, of course, be more complicated than Potter was admitting, but the details did not need to be addressed that night. Lazily Snape reached for his wand, performing a quick cleaning charm on each of them and on the bed. "We'll discuss it in the morning," he said, settling back against Harry's warm, relaxed body.

"Morning, right," Harry agreed in a sleepy, contented voice. "If we don't get distracted again -- tomorrow _is_ Christmas."


	3. Christmas Morning

Snape had spent many Christmases just like this--alone in his dungeon, coming awake with the smug satisfaction that his solitude was unbroken, inviol-- 

Wait. He was not alone. There was someone, a very warm _snuggling_ someone in his bed. A very Harry Potterish someone. Quickly he closed his eyes, but not before catching a glimpse of tousled hair, though that was not, perhaps, a symptom of sleeping against Snape so much as the usual state of Harry’s hair.

And he was calling Potter _Harry_ , even in his mind, that warm haven in his brain that had cached the memories of the evening past, the blindingly hot sexual adventures and the-- Snape grimaced. Might as well admit it, the _affection_ they’d shared in the admittedly cozy afterglow.

“That was a prime bit of snuggling,” came the satisfied voice tucked into Snape’s side. 

“Remind me to instruct you on the quite sensible arrangement of sharing bodily warmth for comfort,” Snape grumbled, but that sleepy voice was keeping any sort of ire at bay. Far at bay, so far as to be at bay upon an alien world. Without a word, Harry tweaked one of Snape’s nipples. He cried out in indignation, but Harry was already wiggling away.

“Body warmth, right, sensible right. Remind me to do that after all mind-numbing sex with you in the future, all right?” Harry said, grinning and stretching beside Snape, rumpling the covers and Snape’s composure. What was left of his composure, anyway.

“Future?” he found himself asking. Harry’s head turned quickly, eyes narrowing.

“In the future,” said Harry firmly. Then the grin broke out and he nudged the thin layer of sheet between them. “The very near future, if that tent in the sheet is any indication.”

There was little point in pretending that they did not both have erections. Snape had been aware of his own since the moment he became aware both of being awake and of Harry's body pressed against his, and he had been aware of Harry's since one moment afterward, though he had told himself at first that he might be imagining things in the case of the latter. Surely once Harry saw him in the light of day, he would lose interest in...

"Happy Christmas," Harry added, breaking into an increasingly familiar grin that seemed less cocksure and more, well, sure of his cock. "It was nice of you to bring my present to bed."

Without any further warning, Harry tugged the sheet between them away, slid down in the bed, and gave Snape's prick a kiss good morning. Snape's prick responded to this with great enthusiasm, pushing itself against Harry's mouth, which opened obligingly and sucked on the head, making Snape doubly glad that he had cast cleaning charms before they had fallen asleep.

"Mmmmm," Harry hummed in approval when he finally came up for air. "I could ride this, couldn't I?"

Snape groaned helplessly as his mind supplied a very attractive image of Harry moving up and down on Snape's prick, hand on his own prick with the same assurance he showed on the Quidditch pitch. "You aren't sore?" he inquired, recalling very well that after his own first time engaging in the activities they had enjoyed the night before, he had been quite sore the next morning, though that might have had much to do with his partner's carelessness and disinterest in Snape's comfort.

Lifting his bum in the air, Harry gave it an experimental -- and quite enticing -- wiggle. "I don't think so. Are you?"

It was absurd that a simple question about Snape's welfare should make him blush. "No," he proclaimed. "I have no objection if you wish to ride my prick."

“I can’t think of a better present than that,” declared Harry, lifting his head long enough for Snape’s reply.

“Whose present?” Snape asked.

Giving a slow lick around the damp head, Harry murmured, “Does it matter?”

No. No it did not. Not when Harry seemed so interested in exploring areas of Snape’s body in the full light of morning to which even Snape was not enthused to re-introduce himself unless he was aroused or desperate or aroused _and_ desperate.

“I need to, um, get myself ready, don’t I?” asked Harry, studying the erection he’d facilitated and the one he sported. “I’m not sure I’m that...bendy.” He twisted his torso from side to side, gauging his bendy-ness.

“Or I could do it,” Snape informed him, “or we could, in the interest of expediency, use the spell.” 

There were two cocks in the room that liked that idea. “I’m a huge fan of expediency,” Harry said, grinning and looking satisfyingly bendy as the grin descended onto Snape’s mouth.

Snape returned the kiss, which tasted of his own arousal, before reaching for his wand to cast the spell. "Turn around," he instructed Harry. It was not, of course, strictly necessary for the part in question to be facing Snape as he uttered a lubrication charm, but Snape did not want to miss an opportunity to examine Harry's bum.

"That tingles," said Harry dreamily, wagging his hips from side to side in a very enticing manner. "Can you do it with the wand pushed inside?"

Groaning helplessly at the image this conjured, Snape admonished, "I cannot in good conscience recommend that you put your wand into any of your orifices."

"You mean it's not normal gay wizard behavior to try fucking yourself with your wand?" Harry grinned at Snape over his shoulder so wickedly that Snape couldn't guess whether he was serious or simply trying to provoke Snape. "Anyway, I'd rather have your prick."

Snape's prick was extremely interested in Harry's now-prepared arse, so much so that Snape reached out to help Harry turn back around and urge him to lower himself so that Snape could feel that aforementioned arse pressing over the aforementioned prick. "Feels like someone's eager for this," Harry said smugly. "I think you like it _because_ I'm a student and very demanding."

"I'd like it with you whether you were a student or not," Snape growled, unable to think clearly with Harry's bum rubbing over his prick.

Harry’s grin made even Snape’s growl seem cheerful and upbeat. “That may be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” he said, shifting to lift himself over the pinnacle of Snape’s quivering prick. Snape slid his hands along Harry’s thighs, feeling the muscles in them tighten with effort as Harry started to slide down onto his prick.

“Slowly,” warned Snape, “there’s no hurry.” 

“Tell that to my cock!” groaned Harry, as Snape’s prick breached him, just enough so that they both felt it. He paused, adjusting the angle of his hips and sliding down a bit further.

“Your cock will recover and we can do this again, but if you hurt yourself I’ll insist on using potions and rest until you recover,” instructed Snape. 

“For someone who doesn’t like to make romantic plans, you certainly talk a lot about the future,” Harry pointed out, grinning again until his smile melted into something dreamier, his muscles all catching up at once that something pretty good was going on in Harry’s body. 

Snape indulged himself, watching as Harry seated himself completely, the well-focused mouth going slack on the last inch or so. “There isn’t anything romantic--” he began, and then Harry’s eyes opened again and Snape forgot about the future and forgot about romance or the lack of it because no one had ever looked at him like that, not like this, not during sex or in any sort of afterglow, not like the future of romance depended on this moment.

He moved his hips, causing Harry's eyes to roll back, which he regretted for an instant before Harry's arse clenched around his prick and distracted him from every thought except an awareness of how good it felt. He didn't think Harry had done it deliberately -- he doubted that Harry could be so much in control when he'd never been in that position before -- but Harry did it again on the next stroke, opening his eyes and grinning at Snape. "Am I doing that right?" he asked breathlessly.

Groaning, Snape nodded, bucking up more firmly with each thrust. "It's very good, it's perfect," he muttered, finding that he couldn't concentrate on thrusting and speaking at the same time without the risk of losing control and embarrassing himself.

Harry's eyes fluttered shut dreamily again, then opened and fixed on him. "You wouldn't lie to me at a time like this, would you?" Snape shook his head, but Harry's expression remained rather stern. "Because you were about to tell me that this isn't romantic, but I don't believe you."

Clearly Harry had a lot to learn about erotic liaisons, and Snape might have attempted to instruct him on the differences between romance and sex, but at that moment Harry wrapped his fingers around his own prick and Snape could concentrate on nothing else. "Not too fast," he warned again, though this time the warning was for himself as much as for Harry.

"Show me." With his free hand, Harry reached out, catching Snape's hand and bringing it to his prick. He shuddered as Snape's fingers replaced his own, bucking his hips forward in a way that Snape's prick, buried inside Harry's arse, appreciated as much as Harry appeared to appreciate it. "This is the most romantic thing in the world," Harry whispered.

Just then Snape couldn’t disagree. In fact he doubted he ever could, not with Harry, who made waking up after the night before seem a romantic adventure. He moved his hand over Harry’s prick, determined not to be too distracted by his own pleasure to give Harry what he was seeking. Another of those remarkable squeezes around his prick and Snape was bucking off the bed. He tried to focus on pulling on Harry’s prick, focus on anything except losing all control. 

Then Harry did something that threw all the rules about lust and romance that Snape knew out the window. Eyes still closed, he dropped his head back, Adam’s apple working as he formed the syllables. “Oh, Severus....”

With a cry Snape’s hips lurched off the bed, fingers gripping Harry’s prick as he poured his seed into Harry’s arse. “Fuck, Harry, _Harry_ ,” he cried out. Harry was squeezing around him, holding Snape’s pleasure inside him, pushing himself between Snape’s nearly slack fingers.

“Yes, Severus, yes, oh fuck, did you?” Harry was gazing at him, trying to keep his eyes open. “You did, oh fuck that’s hot--” The next sounds were clearly meant to be words but sensual groans issued forth instead as pleasure roared through him, spilling out over Snape’s grip.

It was just as well that Harry wasn't able to speak, since Snape wasn't either, and even if he could have caught his breath, he was afraid of the words that might find their way past his lips. He watched as Harry groaned once more, chest flushed scarlet, eyes fluttering open.

"I knew it would be like this," Harry sighed, lifting himself off Snape's prick to collapse at his side, curling against him as he had when Snape had first awoken.

"Like what?" demanded Snape, then winced at the defensiveness in his still-breathless voice. If Harry was going to gloat about having made him lose control...

"Perfect, like you said. I always imagined it would be, but it's much better in real life." Harry's arm slid across Snape's belly and around his waist, squeezing him. It was a pleasant feeling, and Snape's hand crept over the arm to hold it there. "That was all right for you, wasn't it?"

Snape couldn't hold back the chuckle that burst out of his throat. "You must know that it was much better than all right."

He felt Harry's head lift and let his lips curl in response to the grin on Harry's face. " _That_ 's the nicest thing you've ever said to me." Abruptly Snape found himself being kissed with enthusiasm, the bed lurching with the sudden movement. "And it was very romantic, whether you'll admit it or not."

If Harry wanted to live out his imagined romantic idyll, Snape could muster no objection, not when the results led to such satisfying orgasms. He slid his arms around Harry’s frame, enjoying the kiss, awash in the sensual haze they’d created.

“What? No tart comeback?” said Harry with a grin, a grin that felt unexpectedly pleasant against Snape’s lips. “That must mean you’re thinking it but don’t want to say it because you think it will scare me off.” He pressed his belly against Snape’s. “I have news for you, I’m not going anywhere. How’s that for romance?” 

“You have an excellent chance of convincing me,” Snape admitted, “though I do think you’re confusing lust with romance.” There, he had said it, though Harry’s reaction was not exactly what he’d expected. He chuckled, also very pleasant when their bodies were touching like this.

“I’ve been in lust -- this isn’t it.” Something flickered over Harry’s features, some memory or emotion that Snape had never seen there. “This is something else, something I’ve had for a long time, I told you that, something I’ve wanted.” Then the grin was back. “And you let me call you Severus.”

A soft snort escaped Snape’s mouth. “I don’t remember giving you permission,” he said but Harry was laughing softly.

“I think your prick did, very vocal permission.” Harry bent his head to kiss the prick in question, though as enticing as this sight was, not even Harry's mouth could rouse it after such a spectacular climax. "Hmm, I got it sticky," added Harry. "We should take a bath."

"We?" asked Severus with a certain amount of alarm. It was one thing to be naked in a dim room half-covered with a rumpled bedsheet, quite another to stand in the unforgiving light of a bathroom where his entire body would be on display.

"We," Harry confirmed, sniffing at his own armpit. "I definitely need a bath or anyone who passes me will know what I've been doing. Even ghosts." He grinned at Snape. "And it would be romantic to take a bath together -- I've never done that with anyone."

"Neither have I," Snape told him, certain that this would deter Harry from pursuing the subject, but Harry only smiled more brightly.

"Then it will be romantic for both of us. Come on. No wait -- you'd better let me have the loo myself, first. Teachers get their own bathrooms, right?"

"Yes," replied Snape, intending only to answer the last question, but Harry took it as aquiescence to the entire plan and leaped to his feet, practically bouncing in the direction Snape pointed him. With a sigh, Snape heaved himself to his feet, studying himself in the mirror while Harry used the toilet. His skin was very pale and sagged in places it wouldn't on a younger, more athletic man. Harry was sure to be disappointed...

"Your turn," called Harry from the bathroom doorway, leering in appreciation when Snape turned in his direction.

“My...oh right,” Snape said, feeling a bit strange at the immediate air of intimacy that sharing a bathroom for such mundane tasks engendered. He’d seldom had a lover spend so much time with him after the immediate acts of pleasure were over, and none who cared whether or not his bladder felt any urgency. After his turn, he opened the door so Harry, looking not at all abashed, could sidle in and study his enormous old tub.

“Not as fancy as the one in the Prefect’s bathroom, but it will do,” Harry said, working the taps, presenting quite an enticing view of his backside that Snape knew he would hoard in his memories for future wanking needs, assuming his prick ever regained its former stamina after the vigorous workout he’d given it in the past hours. The prickle of awareness through it assured him that it would. 

“Just how would you know that?” Snape inquired, genuinely curious, though he was aware that his tone sounded accusatory even to his own ears. He assumed that one of the notorious trio, prefects as they were and unrepentant rule-breakers, must be the culprit, so the answer surprised him.

“Cedric, in fourth year,” Harry said, his expression sobering.

Snape’s eyes went wide. “You had sex with Cedric Diggory when you were fifteen?” he asked, astonished and outraged.

But Harry was shaking his head, laying a hand on Snape’s arm as though to keep his wand from casting the hex that Snape realized he did indeed want to cast, though to what target beyond Death he couldn’t imagine. “No, you git, Cedric gave me the password so I could work out the egg clue from the Triwizard Tournament.” Then Harry kissed his cheek gently and turned back to the tub. “But thanks for caring.”

Snape felt his cheeks turning scarlet. Harry had already told him that he'd never had sex nor indeed any sort of contact with another man; he must have found Snape's outlandish envy to be comical. "Your past is your own business, of course," Snape said huffily.

Pausing in adding bubbles to the bath water, Harry peered back at him. "I don't really have a past, unless you count soggy kisses with Cho Chang and pretending the reason I couldn't get hard with Ginny was because I was afraid Ron might catch us." Turning off the taps, he stepped into the tub, reaching out a hand for Snape. "Why are you so angry? Are you ashamed of _your_ past?"

Scowling, Snape stepped into the hot water. He had no wish to describe the details of the furtive encounters and brief tussles that had constituted his sex life. His longest relationship had been conducted entirely while he had been Polyjuiced to appear to be someone else in order to track the whereabouts of former Death Eaters following the Dark Lord's first fall. "My past would not impress you," he said shortly.

"Your past already impresses me." There was real warmth in Harry's smile. "Whatever made you who you are, spending your whole life here at Hogwarts so you could be ready when Voldemort came back. I wouldn't mind knowing about how you became that person, but if you don't want to tell me, that's _your_ own business."

It was preposterous that Harry should insist on seeing Snape as a hero. "I did what was necessary," he muttered. "There was no gallantry involved."

"Maybe you didn't intend it, but you're the bravest man I've ever known." Again Harry kissed his cheek, tugging Snape down into the bubbles. "Also the sexiest."

Being called brave and sexy in the same sentence startled Snape so much that he sat down in the tub amid much sloshing of water. “You are a very foolish young man,” he murmured in his own defense.

“Am I?” Harry asked, maneuvering his legs in to fit so he could slide back against Snape’s chest. He shook his head as though he’d given the matter quite a bit of consideration. “No, I don’t think I am. I wasn’t just hiding out in the woods all that time, you know. I heard what people were saying.”

At that, Snape snorted. “People were saying they hated me.” It was, with Harry leaning against his chest, difficult to focus on those endlessly long painful days when ‘what was required’ had been more difficult than he could have imagined, seeing the loathing in Minerva’s eyes, even though he’d worked steadfastly to make certain she had no reason to approach him and suss out his motives. 

Harry shook his head again, a rather delightful experience against Snape’s skin. “It wasn’t so much what people were saying then, you’re right. People said they hated you because they were supposed to, but you could tell people couldn’t quite figure out what you were up to.” He turned his face up to study Snape’s. “Even me, I wanted to hate you but --” He shrugged. “Well, you can see how that worked out.”

Clearing his throat, Snape attempted to refute any idealism on Harry's part. "Of course you would prefer to see me as a hero than to confront the idea that I committed many misdeeds. You were taught to see good and evil as absolutes." It was a topic on which Snape and Dumbledore had frequently clashed. "The truth is that I am neither."

"Like all of us," agreed Harry, nodding, making his hair rub up and down on Snape's chest. "I didn't try to live as a saint, either. I used Unforgivable curses. I got people killed."

"You were fighting to protect more than your own interests..." began Snape, but Harry cut him off.

"I was trying to keep my friends safe. I was so happy when I first came to Hogwarts to be away from the Dursleys, but then I had to be the bloody Boy Who Lived -- every year someone I cared about died or almost died because of me. By the time Voldemort came back, I was glad. I just wanted it all over with, so I could either get on with something like a normal life or die before anyone else got hurt."

"Don't say that," Snape said sharply.

Shifting, Harry glanced back at him. "I know you didn't want me to die. I saw it in your memories -- you said it was because of my mother, but you were angry when you thought Dumbledore had been, what did you say, raising me for slaughter. If you only wanted to stop Voldemort because of my mother, my life wouldn't have mattered."

Snape did not know why it embarrassed him that Harry had figured out the truth of Dumbledore's guess that Snape had grown to care for the boy. "So you carry the delusion not only that I am a hero, but that I bore a secret attachment to you," he muttered.

Harry gave him a conspiratorial grin. "Did you? You didn't try very hard to stop me last night. And by 'not very hard' I mean really not at all."

“Your attention was...flattering,” Snape tried, but he already saw the flaw in that argument.

“Flattery might have been the excuse once, but we’re long past our first time,” countered Harry, rubbing the back of his head against Snape’s chest, whether to distract him or for the sheer pleasure of it Snape wasn’t certain, but it felt good and he didn’t want to argue, not when his arguments meant Harry saw deeper into his motives.

“If I did have such an attachment --” he began, confronted by Harry’s openly knowing grin. He tapped a wet finger over Harry’s nose and continued, “If, then I never dreamed you would ever return it, nor even that it had any hope of leading us here.”

“Naked in a bathtub?”

“With the pleasant afterglow of several very satisfying sexual encounters in the immediate past. That wasn’t in any sort of scenario I concocted,” he admitted.

Harry gave him a curious look. “What sort of scenarios did you concoct?” He was still leaning against Snape’s chest, his hair plastered in a damp wave over his skin.

Snape grunted but saw that Harry was still looking up at him. “Most of them ended with me dying horribly while you looked on.”

That caused Harry to shift around, so that his face was nearly on a level with Snape’s. “That very nearly did happen.” A kiss so swift Snape didn’t even have time to close his eyes. “I’m glad it didn’t.”

"So am I." In fact, Snape had not expected to be lucky enough to have Harry there when the Dark Lord finally got around to dispatching his most loyal follower for one reason or another, though Snape had let himself imagine that in the end, Voldemort would find out his perfidy and Harry would indeed know that Snape had always fought for the same things as the Chosen One. It was why he had been willing to let Harry share his private memories -- not only the necessary ones to persuade Harry of what had to be done, but the ones that documented the breakdown of Snape's friendship with Lily Evans and his humiliation at the hands of James Potter and his friends.

Harry's eyes had grown dark watching him. "We should leave the past in the past," he said. "Though I am curious what brought you back to Hogwarts after it was all over. I'd have thought you had too many memories in this place."

"Not all of my memories are unpleasant." Immediately an image supplied itself to Snape's mind of Harry in dress robes at some party of Slughorn's, looking very fetching...no, Harry had still been underage, surely Snape could not have noticed him then.

He must have blushed, however, for Harry grinned at him. "I only came back because you did. I mean, I have happy memories here too, and I probably _do_ need a proper course in Advanced Potions --"

"Without cheating," Snape clarified.

"Using your book wasn't cheating, it was making use of resources," objected Harry, though he was still grinning. "You know, like using soap to get your hands slippery to wank."

Snape groaned, which he was sure was Harry’s intention; Harry’s smile was lascivious. “You’re deflecting the point,” Snape ground out, unable to banish the image of Harry doing just that.

“Mmmm, I know,” Harry said, though his hand made a gesture over the edge of the tub that made Snape groan again and dig his fingertips in the admittedly firm flesh of Harry’s abdomen. “I’m just saying that I’m here because of you -- here at Hogwarts, here in your tub.” He turned his face so he could look up into Snape’s. “The only reason it took me until the holiday was that I was studying you.”

Frowning, Snape looked into Harry’s upturned face. “Studying me?” Even his innate suspicions could not pinpoint any time he’d caught Harry out doing anything out of the ordinary that would constitute such study. To his amazement, Harry’s cheeks went ever so slightly pink.

“All right, it took me this long to work up my nerve.”

“Ha!” That at least, Snape knew, was the truth. “Not so cheeky as you pretend.” 

Harry was laughing, albeit a bit sheepishly. “Perfectly cheeky but you must admit you’re a formidable quarry.” His tongue flicked out and caressed Snape’s chin. “I didn’t want to mess up with you because I knew you’d never give me another chance.” 

"Then you didn't study me as closely as you believe," replied Snape with a satisfied smirk. He would likely have given Harry as many chances as necessary.

"Really?" He felt Harry wriggle and caught a glimpse of his raised eyebrows. "Even if that's true, you'd have made me miserable. I actually expected you to scoff at me and claim you weren't interested for longer than you did."

"You caught me with my guard down. I blame Christmas," Snape allowed, reaching for the soap. "That, and being completely alone in the castle with you."

"I _knew_ you'd come looking for me," Harry told him, allowing a trace of gloating to creep into his voice. "Even if it was only because you were sure I was up to something. I knew you couldn't be completely disinterested."

"And if I had not come looking?" demanded Snape, sliding soapy hands over Harry's chest.

"Then eventually I'd have come looking for you." Snape could feel the laughter in Harry's chest. Furthermore, Snape believed him, and the belief did rather pleasant things inside him, much as Harry’s hands were doing pleasurable things to his outside.

“Should I be worried that you’ve given this so much thought?” asked Snape, finding his hands slipping up Harry’s sides, beneath his armpits, getting them soapy. “I doubt you gave that much thought to dispatching the Dark Lord.” Only belatedly did he realize bringing up the villain might not be the most romantic thing under the circumstances. And when had he started thinking of taking a bath with Harry as romantic?

Luckily Harry made a dismissive gesture with one soapy hand. “I usually have pretty good luck when I don’t--” He screwed up his features, “Well, let’s just be honest, when I don’t think too much.”

Snape did smile at his honesty. “Or when you have Granger do it for you.”

Giving a shrug, Harry smiled again. He was washing Snape’s legs now, not seeming to mind how thin they were. “A good dark wizard dispatcher takes advantage of his allies, right?” He slanted Snape a knowing look. “That’s what you did. But I did think about how to pursue you. A lot.”

"And you concluded that having me find you reading homoerotic pornography would be the most appropriate course of action," concluded Snape with a smirk. His hands had moved around Harry's back, ostensibly to wash him, but with the result that they were practically embracing.

Grinning, Harry shrugged. "I figured it might take care of issues like whether I was gay and old enough to know what I was doing. Also, if you'd made a horrified face and told me that sort of thing repulsed you, I'd know I read you all wrong, or at least that you'd have made it difficult for anybody, not just me."

"What made you think I was gay?" Snape was certain that Harry had never caught him looking at his bum. Or anyone's bum, for that matter. No Hogwarts student had ever aroused his attention, but Harry seemed to be the exception to every rule. "Especially if you thought I might be in love with your mother."

"I didn't think that till the end -- till I had your memories, which was confusing because until then I'd never seen you show the least interest in a woman. Or a girl. Not even Quidditch players. When I thought you were working for Voldemort, I figured maybe I was wrong about everything and you had a secret crush on Bellatrix Lestrange or something --" Snape's revulsion must have shown in his face, because Harry grinned, giving him a squeeze around the waist. They were, indeed, more hugging than washing each other. "But I didn't think I'd misread how you reacted to some of my memories when we were having Occlumency lessons. You were awfully...interested in things."

Snape's prick gave a small twitch to let him know that it, at least, was indeed interested. He reminded it that they had not eaten in several hours. "We should have breakfast and discuss our common interests," he suggested.

Harry laughed, a very pleasant motion of breath and flesh when they were entwined in each other’s arms. “I’d like that.” A kiss, doubtless meant to be a swift easy thing turned easily to something deeper and more satisfying until the water sloshing distracted them both. Harry was still smiling when they broke apart. “We’re both on holiday, we can spend as much time together as you like.”

Until that moment Snape hadn’t considered either having Harry leave or having Harry stay. It was so much easier to consider one moment to the next, as indeed Harry seemed content to do. “And I would like that,” he said, realizing that he meant it and didn’t mind letting Harry knew he meant it. The warm smile directed at him was worth it, and being rinsed and toweled off felt very indulgent. 

“We don’t have to go up the Great Hall, do we?” Harry asked, rubbing the towel over the back of his neck, ruffling his hair further. 

Already shaking his head, Snape said, “If your tastes don’t run to anything fancy, I can fix breakfast down here.”

The idea seemed to delight Harry. “Really? You can cook down here?” He looked around as if expecting to see an oven butting up beside the bathroom fixtures. 

"I could if I had to, but there are advantages to being a wizard." Snape wondered whether Harry had had to cook for the Dursleys growing up, the way he himself had had to cook for his parents when his father had been drunk and his mother unwilling to leave her room. Sending the towels to dry on the rack, he reached for a robe, and after a moment retrieved another for Harry. Aiming his wand across the bedroom, he lit a fire under the kettle. "I hope you don't mind instant porridge."

"Not at all." Grinning, Harry sat down on the edge of the bed, watching as Snape took out cups for tea and removed the cooling charm on the bread and marmalade in his small pantry. "Can I help?"

"This will only take a minute." The water in the charmed kettle had begun to boil. Snape mixed chopped nuts into the porridge and cast a brief spell to toast the bread, handing Harry the knife to manage the marmalade while he poured the tea. "I'm afraid that if you'd like sausage or eggs, I shall have to summon a house elf."

"No need. I'm betting we're going to have a big Christmas dinner in a few hours, anyway -- Mrs. Weasley will send a package even though I told her it wasn't necessary." Picking up a spoon, Harry dug into the porridge. "Did you grow up eating Muggle food or did your mother buy you Pixie Puffs?" he asked around a mouthful.

"My father didn't want any wizard products in the house," muttered Snape.

"Like my uncle. He wasn't even happy about letting me have books in my room, and he hated Hedwig." For a moment Harry looked sad. "Did you have pets?"

"My mother had a cat. My father hated her. He probably could sense that she was part Kneazle." He returned Harry's smile. It felt very natural when Harry slid his foot over Snape’s, as eager, he hoped, as Snape was to maintain the physical contact that felt comforting when discussing their difficult pasts.

“At least you knew you were a wizard,” Harry said, after swallowing a mouthful of porridge. “You knew there was a way out.” He made a gesture with his hand, with thumb and smallest finger fluttering off to either side in several swoops. Snape didn’t know why he was doing it until Harry went on, “You knew there was an owl coming from Hogwarts.” Harry was making an owl fly out of his hand.

Snape tried to imagine his boyhood with the bleak prospect of enduring it until he was old enough to bolt and bolt without magic and found he simply couldn’t. “You really had no idea, you didn’t even know about magic?” He’d heard from Dumbledore of course that Harry was woefully kept in the dark about his origins, but hadn’t truly believed it.

Shaking his head, Harry said, “Not a thing. Whenever something weird happened to me, I thought I was just...weird.” He bit into some toast. “But my aunt and uncle knew better and never said a word.” 

From his memories of Petunia Evans, Snape had no trouble believing that she had manipulated her nephew the way she had tried to do with her sister. "Perhaps they thought they were protecting you," he said, trying to imagine a kinder interpretation of her actions. "My mother couldn't protect me from my Muggle relatives. My father resented that she had a child who was like her instead of like himself."

Harry was finishing all of Snape's marmalade but Snape found that he didn't mind. "It isn't like your mother could have done anything about that, right?" Harry asked between bites.

"There is a spell," Snape told him. "It's considered a curse for obvious reasons, but I imagine that the wizards who invented it must have been desperate not to have magical children."

Gaping, Harry put down his spoon. "There's a spell to make a baby non-magical?"

Shrugging a bit, Snape finished off his porridge. "A complicated spell, but my mother was skilled at hexes and curses. If she'd wanted to be certain not to bear a magical child, she could have. She chose to have a child like her, instead, even though she must have known it would alienate my father."

"But surely he must have known that the odds were good he'd have a witch or wizard for a child." Harry frowned a bit. "That's one of the things we never got to before I had to leave Hogwarts -- wizarding genetics. I don't understand why there are Squibs any more than I understand how two Muggles can have a wizard baby."

“All part of magical theory, though to be honest there are many different answers depending on which so-called expert you ask,” answered Snape. With a wave of his wand, he sent his empty bowl over to the sink and started it washing itself. 

“I’m glad your mum didn’t use that spell,” Harry said. “Not that I wouldn’t have fallen for you if you weren’t a wizard, but I don’t think we ever would have met if you weren’t.” He pushed his own bowl and and gave Snape’s cheek a quick nuzzle. 

“You haven’t--” Snape began, but Harry had already picked up his own bowl and taken it by hand over to the sink to join Snape’s. He wasn’t certain that Harry wasn’t pretending not to have heard him, but even as he was debating it, Snape decided he didn’t want to know if Harry had merely slipped up or exaggerated his attachment because he certainly hadn’t fallen for Snape over so little time spent. He cleared his throat and said instead, “You might have had an easier time of it in school if we hadn’t met.”

Harry had found a spot of marmalade on one of his fingers and was licking it off, the sight of which did pleasant things to Snape’s prick. “You know me, I like a quiet life,” he said, chuckling around his damp finger. Leaning back on the counter, he smiled and shook his head. “You were a right prick, but you haven’t tossed me out of here yet, not even when I said I’d fallen for you.”

Clearly Harry intended to press the issue. Snape decided that ignoring him was probably the least dangerous of responses. "I had to be a 'right prick' to keep us both safe," he reminded Harry.

"Oh, I know. And you had to make sure I actually learned enough to be ready when Voldemort returned to power. I kept wondering how you could possibly not have known that your old textbook was sitting around in the Potions classroom, and then I started to wonder if that wasn't just a lucky accident."

Snape felt his cheeks reddening. It had only been luck that put the textbook in the hands of Harry rather than Ron Weasley, but Snape had guessed long before the _Sectumsempra_ incident the reason Harry had suddenly become Slughorn's star pupil. "It wasn't lucky for Draco Malfoy," he pointed out.

"No, but you saved him. Then you let me hide the book and only gave me a bunch of detentions instead of forcing me to turn it in. For all you knew, I was going to try all the rest of the spells and things you wrote down in it." Harry paused, frowning. "You must have known I might test one of your curses on someone like Draco."

"I did not expect you to be so foolish as to try a spell whose results you could not predict on anyone but your most dangerous enemy. But it worked to my advantage, since I _did_ save Draco and further persuaded his family that I was devoted to their welfare."

Nodding, Harry smiled at him. "I think the Malfoys are more impressed by your scheming than angry that you were never really working for Voldemort. You're a much better Slytherin than any of them are." Snape could not help smiling a bit at this, and as he did so, Harry added, "Very clever, and brave too. It's no wonder I fell for you."

Closing his eyes briefly, Snape opened them and leaned back in his chair. “You want to talk about this, don’t you?” He hated emotional discussions, especially when his own emotions were in play.

Harry pushed away from the counter, coming around behind Snape’s chair and draping his arms around Snape’s neck. “No, not really. Just letting you know.” He dropped a kiss somewhere in Snape’s hair. “I’m not any good at talking about stuff like that.” His face was pressed into Snape’s hair, cheek rubbing over the top of his head. “I bet you aren’t any better. But you know I wouldn’t have gone to those lengths to get you to seduce me if I was just--” He picked one hand off Snape’s shoulder and waved it vaguely. “Curious or longing for constant danger.” He dropped both hands to Snape’s shoulders and gave them a squeeze. 

Tilting his own face up, Snape surveyed Harry. “I can’t promise _constant_ danger,” he admitted. 

Harry let out a laugh that was suspiciously like a giggle, kissing the top of Snape’s head again. It felt surprisingly good, though the caress--if it could even be called that--was minimal. Tentatively he reached up and laid one hand over Harry’s, silent if genuine affection. "Constant danger is tiring," Harry admitted. "Doesn't really leave enough energy for sex."

"Is that why you didn't have sex while you were on the run?" asked Snape, trying not to grumble. He didn't feel much like grumbling anyway with Harry's chin in his hair.

"I didn't want to have sex just for the sake of having sex, and there was enough on my mind that I wasn't thinking about sex all that much." Snickering, Harry gave him a squeeze. "The prime of my life wasted chasing horcruxes --"

"What?" The word came out sharply, but Harry's last words had cut across the pleasant haze that had surrounded Snape's thoughts.

"Didn't Dumbledore tell you? Why you couldn't do anything about the curse from the ring? And why we had to go looking for that locket the night he died?"

Snape shook his head. Dumbledore had told him only what he felt it safe for Snape to know if the Dark Lord managed to invade his mind. Of course he wouldn't have shared such a crucial piece of information. Now that he knew, many other things fell into place -- why Voldemort had been so concerned about the safety of certain relics, how he had returned after his fall at Godric's Hollow. "The snake," he said abruptly, full of loathing, touching the scars on his throat. "That was why she did his bidding even when he didn't speak Parseltongue. He put a piece of himself inside her."

"That was probably why I could save your life, too." Stepping around, Harry pushed back his hair to reveal the scar on his forehead. At once Snape understood the rest: why Dumbledore had believed that Harry had to die at Voldemort's hand, why only the Chosen One could have sucked the venom -- and presumably the curse -- from Snape's throat. "Lucky, don't you think?" Harry had steeled his expression. "So after all that, if you think either of us should worry about little things like sneaking around to have sex, I'd think your priorities were a bit odd."

“My priorities,” Snape said, “are perfectly in order.” He tugged on Harry’s hand, pulling him into his lap. Harry went down easily in a comfortable sprawl as though he’d been falling artfully into Snape’s lap his whole life. “We shall not, however, be sneaking around. If you’re ashamed to be seen with me--” 

Harry cut him off with a kiss, a rather urgent one, that made sneaking around seem like a very poor idea. “I’m not ashamed, of you or of myself, of anything.” He put a hand lightly over Snape’s mouth. “I couldn’t be, I didn’t do all those things so I could spend the rest of my life worrying about what people thought of me. Or of the man I’m involved with.” He smiled and slid his hand away. “The one I’ve fallen for.”

“Did you save my life because--” Snape began but Harry shook his head. 

“I would have tried with anyone,” he replied, then made a face, “Well, maybe not Malfoy, but you know, if he looked like a wounded ferret I might have tried even with him. I would have tried with you even if I hated you.” He rubbed his mouth over Snape’s. “Which I don’t.”

Snape smiled against the pressure of Harry's lips. "That is fortunate, since I cannot imagine you would wish to spend so much time with someone you hated."

Grinning, Harry wriggled in Snape's lap, reminding Snape's prick that it was nearly recovered from the most sex it had had in...very well, ever. "We don't have to sneak around?" Harry asked. "I mean, you won't get in trouble if I am still, technically, a student?"

Snape had very nearly let himself forget about that particular complication. He groaned slightly. "If you are serious about continuing this..." He blanched, contemplating all the ways Minerva would punish him if -- no, when -- she discovered them.

"I am serious. More serious about continuing this than school, in fact. You know I only came back for you, though now that I'm here, I'm not really in any hurry to leave. And it'll be a lot easier for us to see each other if we're both at Hogwarts than if I accept some job at the Ministry, all of which seem to come down to 'Poster Boy For Latest Rehabilitation Project' which I don't really fancy." He frowned. "You don't suppose Professor McGonagall would give me a job, do you? Assistant Quidditch Coach or something?"

"I imagine she would give you any job you wished, but you aren't going to waste yourself coaching school Quidditch." The words came out as more of a declaration than Snape had intended.

Harry looked thoughtful, his fingers playing along the back of Snape’s neck. “I’d rather teach something worthwhile,” he said, sounding a little wistful.

“You’ve thought about this before?” Snape asked shrewdly.

“Sitting in your lap naked?” He gave another wiggle, emphasizing the naked part. “I can honestly say I never got us much more along than a wild night in bed, after which you threw me out or I woke up.” He sobered a bit. “But yeah, I have thought about teaching, “ he admitted. 

Snape found his hands wandering down Harry’s back. “Don’t think you need to teach here to necessitate being with me,” he said, trying not to sound like a stern teacher, though the habit, he suspected, would always be hard to break with Harry. “Whatever profession you chose, and you do have a choice, there are no insurmountable obstacles to spending time here in the dungeons if you chose.”

“God, I love magic,” Harry said, one side of his mouth pulling up a bit. 

“So you have said, on more than one occasion,” Snape pointed out, “Though why particularly just now?”

“Because I can see myself coming down your Floo or meeting you on a broom, or both of us popping into a room somewhere, though if I can stay here--at Hogwarts I mean--I’d like that the most. I feel...at home here.” 

Snape, who had lived at Hogwarts for most of his adult life, nodded in understanding. Although he technically still owned the property at Spinner’s End, he had removed everything salvageable after the war and brought it to the school; after the months spent living there with Pettigrew spying on him, having to pretend to be doing the Dark Lord's bidding even in his own room, he had no wish ever to see the place again.

"You wouldn't be disappointed in me if I didn't try to become an Auror?" asked Harry, brow furrowing in concern.

The question surprised Snape. "I had thought that was your ambition - I would not wish a Ministry job upon anyone, not even an arrogant Gryffindor." The furrowed brow smoothed as Harry grinned. "But it would be a mistake for you to choose a profession based solely on where you wish to live. Or with whom."

As soon as the words were out, Snape feared that he had said too much, but Harry was still smiling at him. "There aren't rules about professors living with non-professors?" he asked, giving another suggestive wriggle. "I've never heard of any lovers sneaking in and out of Professor Sinistra's room, or Professor Slughorn trying to convince any famous witches to move in with him."

"I doubt Slughorn can get it up," replied Snape sourly, making Harry laugh. "As for Aurora, I have known her for many years, yet I have only met her husband three or four times; they are very private people. The rules concern discretion, not relationships."

“I can be discreet,” Harry said, around a smirk as though Snape had agreed to give him a Welcome the Dungeons party. “I can be very discreet, I can be the soul of discretion. No one will ever know I’m here.” He kissed Snape’s neck. “Or here...or...”

“Point taken,” Snape said, a little breathlessly. Even Harry’s casual kisses were heartfelt and arousing, though they had both teetered on and off the edge of arousal since they’d finished breakfast. 

“I do have a house, you know. You could come there. It’s completely private,” Harry went on, voice muffled against Snape’s throat. 

“You seem very intent on the future,” Snape pointed out, trailing one finger down the center of Harry’s back. 

Harry’s face lifted at once, cheeks a bit flushed, eyes looking uncertain. “Are you telling me I shouldn’t?” His hands crept up, fingers clenching into Snape’s shoulders.

Slowly Snape shook his head. “No, but we do have a very agreeable presents,” he said, pressing something quite agreeable indeed against Harry. “I think the matters of discretion and privacy will take care of themselves if we are determined--”

“I am,” Harry put in quickly. 

“As am I, for as long as you are willing,” said Snape and for a moment Harry just looked at him, then Harry was kissing him again. "Until the novelty wears off," Snape murmured.

"What do you mean, the novelty?"

"I mean..." Life had taught Snape not to expect too much of the future. Unlike Harry, he knew better than to believe a handsome and famous young man would keep wriggling so delightfully in his aging lap as he became aware of all the other interested parties who would make themselves available to him even if Snape did persuade him to remain isolated at Hogwarts. "Until you wish to seek out someone closer to your own age."

Harry scowled at him. "I have never had any interest in someone closer to my own age. Are you making excuses or do you actually expect me to get tired of you? Because that's not going to happen."

It was impossible not to find Harry irresistible with his chin stuck out like that and the beginnings of a pout on his lips. Snape kissed them. "I am not making excuses," he said. "I'm trying to be realistic. You may be willing to fling yourself heedlessly into an attraction --"

"Fling!" interrupted Harry, his good mood returning with his grin. "Oh yes. I'm willing to fling myself at you as much as necessary to convince you I'm not going anywhere." As if to prove his point, he grabbed Snape's face in his hands and kissed him more deeply.

Snape tried to remind himself that it would only be more difficult later if he allowed himself to become attached to Harry, only to have Harry do what any reasonable young man would do and find a more exciting lover. He could not help thinking, however, that Harry had never been very reasonable.

“You know it isn’t exactly news to me that I can have pretty much anyone I want,” Harry said, though he hadn’t lifted his lips very far from Snape’s mouth, as though contemplating another kiss though not sure where to bestow it. 

“Only pretty much?” asked Snape, rubbing his cheek against one of Harry’s hands. Harry’s fingers spread over his cheek, sliding down his face and rubbing down his neck. 

“I’m sure some people would say no just to be able to say they said no to Harry Potter,” he admitted with a charmingly self-deprecating laugh. He didn’t look like the possibility of such rejection worried him overmuch. 

Snape tilted his face up. “That’s very perceptive of you,” he said not bothering to hide the trace of admiration in his voice.

Chuckling, Harry kissed him again. “The point is that I do know what I want, I know what I don’t want, and if there’s a chance you might want the same thing, then I’m willing to have a fling or whatever you want.”

Snape’s eyebrows climbed. “What _I_ want?” 

Both of Harry’s hands had ended up beneath Snape’s hair, moving along his neck. “Well, what _we_ want, but I’m pretty sure we both want the same thing right now.”

Snape's prick gave another twitch to remind him that it, at least, knew exactly what it wanted. He worried that it might embarrass him, if not this time then the next -- he was nowhere near as young as Harry, and he did not know how years of abstinence might have affected his libido. "What makes you think I can keep up with you?" he asked Harry.

"You've more than kept up with me so far." Harry's smile warmed the room as well as Snape's lower body. "But if you're tired and you'd rather just snuggle, I can do that too."

"I have less experience with snuggling than I do with sex." If only Snape's prick would stop using his tongue to say things he hadn't meant to speak aloud. His cheeks flushed, but Harry was busy kissing one of them and didn't appear to notice.

"We can learn that part together, then." Harry's bum wriggling over his lap was making Snape less interested in snuggling right at the moment than in doing other things, but the thought warmed him even more than Harry's eager body, and he filed it away for later. "Though you don't feel tired," added Harry, positioning himself and wiggling atop Snape's prick.

Snape knew that even if Harry claimed not to be sore, there was a limit on how much penetration could be pleasurable to one who had not experienced it before. "This time," he said, or perhaps his prick spoke through his mouth again, "I want you to show me what you do to pleasure yourself."

It was Harry's turn to blush. "You mean you want me to --?" he asked, gesturing at his own prick.

Snape let his gaze follow Harry’s, then gave a slow nod. “Mmmm hmmm.” He added a brief hand gesture, though he could tell by the spreading blush that Harry had caught on. “I imagine the sight of it will be quite arousing.” He knew Harry could tell that he needed no further arousing, so he added, “when you are no longer in my lap, or in my room.”

Snape had never noticed that Harry’s Adam’s apple bobbed when he swallowed hard, though of course Snape had never been this close to observe the movement. “I, well, if you’re sure.”

There was no need to nod, though Snape did so. Harry was already leaning back on Snape’s lap and could see quite obvious evidence of Snape’s sureness. “Describe it as well. You have a fine voice when you aren’t botching spells.”

Harry’s glare held no heat, at least not the heat of anger, though there was a trace of the heat of arousal. “Well, first I get comfortable,” he said, clearing his throat again.

“Fair point,” Snape said, “let’s get you comfortable.” He gave Harry’s bum a squeeze that felt proprietary. His chin jerked toward the bed. Harry nodded at once, sliding back with the easy grace of youth, unselfconscious about his bobbing prick as he held out a hand for Snape.

Together they walked to the bed and Harry sprawled on his back with his head against a pillow, bending his knees invitingly. Snape sat on the edge of the bed, then pulled his legs up so that he could face Harry. His own prick was of the opinion that this was one of the best ideas it had ever had, though it gave a hard throb to remind Snape that it, too, wanted some attention while Snape was riveted by Harry.

"I get comfortable," Harry said again, rubbing his hands down his chest, pausing to rub his thumbs over his nipples. Snape did an admirable job of not whimpering. He watched as Harry slid his fingers as far down as the dark hair on his belly, then pulled them back up again, this time to pinch the nipples. "And if I have time and it's not, you know, a quick wank before I have class with you, I do this."

"You haven't had a class with me in quite some time." Snape's voice was too breathless for him to disguise the effect the words and the actions were having on him. He could see from Harry's small grin that Harry was well aware of this.

"That's true, but sometimes I need a wank when I know I'm going to see you whooshing through the Great Hall in your robes." Harry made a whooshing noise with his mouth that was one of the most erotic things Snape had ever heard. "But if I have time, sometimes I do this --"

He licked a finger, and Snape knew before it had reached its destination what Harry intended to do with it. He groaned, instinctively giving his own aching prick a squeeze, his embarrassment diminished by the fact that Harry was concentrating on rubbing the finger around his own arsehole. Slowly the fingertip disappeared inside, and Snape groaned again.

“You do that to yourself?” Snape asked breathlessly, his own fingers loose around his prick. He could feel the erratic pulse of it against the skin of his fingers. Harry nodded, tipping the finger in and out several times. “Just your finger or--” He wasn’t sure what else Harry would have access to--surely Harry had been joking earlier when he'd suggesting trying this with a wand.

“Just this so far, but I’d love to have a--” The blush that had mostly abated until now, when it pinked the sides of his neck. “Something larger, a toy maybe.”

Snape could never have admitted such a thing to a lover, not even the casual sorts of lovers he’d had. His cock throbbed again when he took his hand away, sticking one finger in his mouth and rubbing it beside Harry’s.

“Fuck!” Harry cried out, starting to slide his own finger away, but Snape gestured with his free hand and then changed his mind and reached for a bit of the oil on the nightstand. He spilled out a bit over his own fingers, transferring some to Harry’s and moving it around the tight opening, pressing in beside Harry’s finger. 

Neither of them went in deeply, fingertip to fingertip, moving in and out. "I'm not hurting you?" Snape asked, unable to avoid hearing the tremor in his own voice.

"Do I look like anything feels less than perfect?" Harry's eyes rolled back every time their fingers pressed in. With his free hand, Harry reached for the erection poking up over his belly. "When I get this horny, which I usually do just thinking about you, and not doing anything as hot as this, I have to do this..." The fingers took a long, slow stroke from base to tip and back.

Snape knew that Harry was showing off for him rather than demonstrating his usual technique at masturbation, but he didn't care; it was so erotic seeing Harry in this position that his own prick was twitching in the air untouched as if trying to get a look at the proceedings. He wanted to put his mouth on Harry's prick and at the same time he did not want to stop watching. "That's very stimulating," he muttered.

Groaning, Harry tilted his hips up, making Snape's finger slide in deeper as Harry's own hand retreated to rub his balls. "Oh yes," he nodded, looking down to watch as Snape continued to fuck his arse with the finger. "It's so much better with you!"

Shuddering, Snape closed his hand around his own insistent prick and stroked it in time with Harry's steady tugs on himself. He could feel Harry's arse tighten around his finger each time Harry's thumb spread the wetness leaking from Harry's prick, and promised himself he would be licking that off later from the thumb and the prick both.

"I'm going to come if we don't stop," gasped Harry presently, his eyes rolling back.

"Then come," Snape tried to say, but even the thought was too much, as he felt Harry's inner muscles clench his finger once more and watched Harry's prick throb in Harry's hand while his own hand instinctively twisted as it stroked him. His words cut off with a cry as he spurted over his fingers, spattering Harry's thigh.

Resting his head on the bedstead, Harry sucked in a shaky breath. “I may never stop coming if you keep doing that,” he said, opening his eyes and giving a decidedly lecherous smile to Snape. 

Snape’s prick, even spent, thought lecherous was a good look on Harry. “Have I suggested that you stop?” he asked, a bit breathless himself. 

Harry’s grin was more than a little lecherous. “I want to do it in every way possible, and maybe come up with some that no one’s ever tried before.” He leaned forward, about to kiss Snape, when instead Snape clutched his hand and brought it to his mouth, remembering his earlier promise to taste it, swirling his tongue around Harry’s thumb.

This time the quiver went through Harry’s entire body, not just his prick. “Fuck! I’m pretty sure I never thought of that one,” he moaned, “but I’m really glad you did.” He gave another of those groans that if they had not just engaged in satisfying simultaneous masturbation would have given Snape’s prick an excuse to perk up. He tugged his thumb out of Snape’s mouth and replaced it with his own lips. "I may never stop kissing you, either."

"You may have to, from time to time, to eat," Snape pointed out.

"And to sleep, but then I intend to get right back to it." Flopping back on the bed, Harry gave a happy wiggle. "Speaking of which, I could use a nap before we go to the Great Hall for dinner."

"We've only just woke up," Snape pointed out. He could not remember the last day he had done nothing but eat breakfast, take a bath, and have orgasms until well past noon.

But he did not know when he might next have an opportunity to spend time lying beside Harry, watching him sleep, feeling him close. Though he intended only to rest -- very well, to snuggle -- against the warm body in his bed, he felt his eyes drifting shut, and within minutes he was sleeping soundly. Dinner would be waiting, and beyond that, a very Happy Christmas indeed.


End file.
